Daily Times, October 24, 2008
Sighing for a “strong leader”
by J Sri Raman
If not India at large, is at least its upwardly mobile middle class longing for a Lauha-Purush (Iron Man)? Is it beginning to root for Lal Krishna Advani, the current bearer of the coveted title at the national level, as well as for men made of the same stern stuff in the states?
It is indeed doing so, if one believes the not-so-subtle propaganda line peddled by some Far Right scribes on the eve of electoral events with the country’s political future at stake. The claim is that the class, which identifies the country with itself, is sighing audibly for a “strong leader” and already voting for one in various states.
In order to follow this argument, it is necessary to take note of a few of the recent variations on the always vicious Far Right theme. This force of many facets — and factions — has stuck firmly all through to its fundamental faith of communal fascism that seeks to redefine democracy as rule by the religious majority.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political front of the ‘parivar’ (the Far Right “family”), might resort at times to other poll issues ranging from Bofors to prices, but has always harked back to its so-called “Hindutva” platform and sought its mandate on its minority-bashing policies and programmes in the main. For the forthcoming elections, too, it is ready with a formidable array of religious-communal issues, supplied by the Amarnath affair in Kashmir, the Sethu Samudram stalemate in the south and the conversion debate over the recent spate of killings and riots in Orissa.
Bomb blasts across the country over the recent period, however, have made an important addition to the BJP’s traditional bag of tricks. The party and the parivar have been engaged in efforts to appropriate the “anti-terror” plank as their own. Their crusade against the minorities, especially the largest of them, ties in quite well with their campaign against “terrorism” of community-identifying labels. It is not only Narendra Modi who now says, “All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” The Far Right has now elevated the epigram to the status of a mantra or a mathematical formula.
“Development” is yet another dimension added to the BJP-parivar electoral discourse. This is not an entirely new development, of course. Narendra Modi was, for example, supposed to have won his repeated poll victories on the plank of development as well as his diabolical pogrom. With a communally polarised vote in his favour, he was somehow supposed to have won the development debate raised by the Narmada agitation that had questioned the displacement of people by a dam project that had initially no place for them.
Modi and the BJP are now said to have won an even bigger development battle with the shifting of a people’s car project by the titanic corporate group of Tatas from the Left-ruled West Bengal to Gujarat. Ratan Tata, the chief of the group (who had famously said once that it would be “foolish” for anyone not to invest in Gujarat), preferred Modi’s terrain over another BJP-ruled State, Karnataka, which had witnessed only an anti-Christian offensive, not analogous in either scale or savagery to the massacre in Gujarat.
Nothing like a strong dose of communal fascism, the Far Right can now claim with the concurrence of the middle class and the media, to create the most desirable conditions for investments and development. The connection is clear. Only in a state where social contradictions and conflicts are seen as solely communal can the corporates look forward to smooth functioning, free from peasants’ protests over land acquisition or labour troubles. It is no accident that Gujarat is known not only for the grisliest record of communal violence but also for the tamest of trade unions in the country.
Not long after the shift of the Tata’s Nano project to Gujarat, there was a dramatically contrasting demonstration of the Far Right’s might in India’s financial capital. Jet Airways, one of the private airlines to have soared into prominence in the recent past, took India by surprise by announcing a layoff of its probationary and trainee staff. The laid-off staff in Mumbai, in turn, took everyone by even greater surprise by rushing to enlist the support of Raj Thackeray, the nephew of Shiva Sena chief Bal Thackeray, outdoing his uncle in politics of regionalism, pursued with a parivar-like rabidity.
The BJP may protest against the attacks unleashed in the metropolis on north Indians by Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navanirman Samiti. But the Shiva Sena’s anti-outsider stance never prevented the national party from treating it as a prized regional ally.
Jet employees have since got their jobs back but not without letting everyone know about just how far the rising middle class relaxes standards for its readership. In good times, the educated or half educated class, which hopes to enter the elite club, may guffaw at the Raj Thackerays. When the chips are down, however, it won’t fight too shy of a Far Right godfather as a champion.
The possibility gives new hopes to the propagandists we were talking about. Says one of them, known for proximity to Advani: “In moments like these [marked by terror strikes and the new trauma of job insecurity], the temptation to look for a strong, no-nonsense leader who can offer a lifeline is irresistible... An exasperated industry said so after the tomfoolery in Singur and the sacked Jet Airways staff said so in Mumbai.”
The question, however, is whether the voters — mercifully, not only of the middle class — will say so in the general elections that will follow within months of the forthcoming state assembly polls. The shadow prime minister, as the BJP has branded Advani, cannot be too sure.
The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint
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