Narendra Modi, who has just narrowly won his third election, and I have two things in common. We are both Gujaratis, and we both cut our teeth writing critical accounts of the Emergency, the short-lived dictatorship of the mid-Seventies. But the similarities end there. I remain wedded to the historian’s craft, beavering away in libraries. Modi’s found greener pastures at 7 Lok Kalyan Marg, the prime minister’s leafy residence in Lutyens’s Delhi.
I can, moreover, enter and leave Britain at will. Modi was banned from Blighty for a decade for having blood on his hands. When raucous Hindu pilgrims aboard the Sabarmati Express were torched alive by a Muslim mob in 2002, it came as manna from heaven for Modi, the newly descended carpetbagging chief minister of Gujarat. Dipping into his sixth-form science textbook, he declared that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. The police were pressured to stand down as Gujarat descended into violence. Muslims had to be “taught a lesson”, Modi told senior policemen.
In the pogrom that ensued, Hindu nationalists unleashed fire and fury, using electoral rolls to smoke out Muslims. Some 2,000 were killed, and more than 125,000 displaced to refugee camps. One of Modi’s close associates later boasted to the press how he had “slit open” a pregnant Muslim woman during the riots. Meanwhile, his ministers and marionettes were spotted marauding about Ahmedabad, orchestrating the violence.
In London and Washington, the revulsion prompted visa bans on Modi. At home, however, this only stirred sympathy. So you had the liberal journalist Vir Sanghvi only half-ironically working up much patriotic indignation: “He may be a mass murderer, but he’s our mass murderer.” Modi made hay while the sun shone, bullying the election commissioner into — in that splendid Indian-English word — “preponing” the election in Gujarat, insinuating that if he didn’t, it was only because he was a Christian in the pay of foreign masters.
The snap election produced the desired result. Hindus closed ranks and Modi won his first election. Twelve years later, he gave us a repeat performance, only this time it was on the national stage. Hard on the heels of the anti-Muslim Muzaffarnagar riots — again choreographed by Hindu nationalist parliamentarians, whom Modi hailed as “heroes” on the hustings — his Bharatiya Janata Party coasted to victory in 2014, permanently displacing the Congress Party that had ruled the country more or less uninterruptedly since independence. The chief minister of Gujarat was now prime minister of India. By this point, his mates had exonerated him for the 2002 riots.
The French political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot recently wrote a superlative study of the early life and dark times of India’s current ruler. (Full disclosure: my book on the Emergency, aforementioned, was co-authored with him.) Gujarat Under Modi languished in “legal read” hell for a decade. Timorous lawyers felt it betrayed “an unyielding view of Narendra Modi” — thanks, captain obvious — and, accordingly, recommended cuts so extensive as to make a Vatican censor squirm. Jaffrelot exercised good judgment in waiting for a plucky publisher (Hurst) to come by rather than suffer the surreal indignity of seeing his book stripped to the bone.
The early chapters tell us how the young Modi, a low-caste tea-seller’s boy, was drawn to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the BJP. On the face of it, the RSS was an upper-caste affair, whose very existence owed to the déclassé resentment of the high-born in a world where the lower orders had begun to get ideas above their station. The aim was to sublimate their frustrations, heightened on account of their vow of celibacy (yes, Modi’s likely still a virgin), through punitive calisthenics, sweaty wrestling and textual exegesis. These days, with less time on his hands, Modi squeezes world leaders in ever-tighter embraces — the “hugging diplomacy” for which he has become infamous.
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SubscribeI am glad there still is a large portion of the Indian population that is rejecting the move to a Hindu theocracy.
How seriously ignorant are you? The only ” theocracy” is of Sunni Muslim bigots of the dynastic corrupt heirs of the Indian ” Opposition”.
That’s why there is Sharia Law, separate quotas for Muslims and making the most of all worlds using affirmative action benefits reserved for lower caste Hindus.
And if Congress has its way separate electorates of the Muslim league variety.
Hmm
So much hate…
I like most of your comments and respect your contribution to this website. So perhaps you can explain to me what is so good about Modi, if you have the time and inclination.
Find me on Substack AJ. See my remarks to the comment of 4th April.
I think you raise a complex issue.
Congress would be more effective if it was not controlled by a dynasty.
Sadly the Western Msm and Establishment are heavily invested in dynasts in Congress since Nehru. Little realising it only strengthens CCP with whom Congress had signed an MOU in 2008 and the contents of which haven’t been revealed..but it’s curious that the dynasts always favour policies which strengthen CCP….
India has had heat waves this last week. It sounds like tempers have been flaring as a result. I suggest that India should switch to a nocturnal schedule to avoid the blazing heat of day, say a rest period from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM would do. Otherwise, perhaps a very large umbrella over the country could help to ward off the heat. If neither of these ideas seem practical, only large-scale climate control will do.
Do The Right Thing?
Isn’t Sonia from Piemonte, not from Veneto (the other side of North Italy)?
From Turin suburbs. An au pair lady at Cam where she met the heir to Indira
I have tried to find your substack but no luck. Please give me a link.
https://sayantani15.substack.com/
Go to the Notes and Chat section please
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/indias-uprising/
https://www.republicworld.com/opinion/the-swapan-dasgupta-piece-that-new-york-times-gagged/?amp=1
You may find these articles interesting.
Sounds like a boring broken record… tic tic tic
Who are you ?
A useless communist atheist of indian decent who thinks your opinion has any relevance on Indian politics ?
STFU ! Your marxist crimetopia is dead. Religions and India aren’t ! F** communists, and I don’t pay an Unherd subscription to be lectured by a leftover luggage of the Komintern.
This author is so full of himself, I suspect he thinks the sun shines out of his fundament. Can’t UnHerd get a more sane writer to tell us about India
Why does UH publish this sensationalist twister of facts? A Marxist faker too?
I am going to counter his lies pointwise –
BJP is the largest party. Congress is a 140 seats less despite the best efforts of a ragtag band of thugs called the ” Opposition”.
This is BJPs third term, and it is no mean achievement to beat anti- incumbency and rising voter expectations to come back to power after beating a united Opposition of 28 political parties. It has swept several states of the North, done remarkably well in the Eastern state of Orissa and even opened its account in Kerala. It’s vote share has increased even in Tamil Nadu- the Dravidian heartland.
Mr Modi is being sworn in shortly as the 3rd term Prime Minister – a record rivalling that of Nehru.
The reasons for BJP losing about 30 seats in Uttar Pradesh which they hadnot counted on is because- Muslims voted en bloc – as any hapless non Muslims who live in Bradford know.
And the Opposition ran a ” redistribution of wealth” and separate electorates for Muslims campaign which would do Lenin and Jinnah proud.
The ” clientelism and corruption” is entirely that of Congress and the hard Left regime in Bengal, whose goon brigades have been collecting blood money from hapless villagers. Again in Uttar Pradesh, strong law and order enforcement affected petty corruption and the power of the mafiosi, who used rural voters to promise freebies and instant distribution of free cash to win votes.
If anything, BJPs developmental efforts were defeated by poor propaganda on their part, and slick pamphletteering by the Opposition to make empty promises.
Now those foolish voters who think they will have freebies pouring in will soon turn against their new MPs.
Yes, Mr Modi himself set a high target for his party count which they couldn’t reach. Of course there will be introspection as to why they lost some seats compared to 2019.
This election has probably been one of the hugest foreign interference.
Contrary to the best efforts of Western intelligence agencies ” influence” operations acting in conjunction with CCP, there is no North South divide in India. In fact the allies of the BJP in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in South India have done very well.
Congress has lost seats in Karnataka where it has run a divisive communal and pro Hamas state government.
The rest of Anil’s fevered drivel is the product of his own fantasist mind.
He needs to be seriously investigated as to his connections with India’s Northern neighbours who maybe momentarily delighted that Mr Modi has lost a few seats.
Surprisingly the talk of ” electoral autocracy” and other allegations about electoral processes in India have suddenly disappeared, not just from the mendacious ” professor” above but also the Western mainstream media whose election coverage on India in the past few months have been a lurid stream of fiction.
It is beneath my dignity to react to the rest of the turgid balderdash.
If he really knows history- which he claims to teach- can he recall the massacre cum genocide unleashed by the Communist Party of India in Marichhjhapi, Bengal in 1979?
Of the China backed Maoists in Central India for decades of the 1990s- 2000s? Of separatists in Kashmir? Of brutalities unleashed by his favourite Commies in Bengal over their 34 years of misrule?
Further if Anil has guts( which I know he doesn’t) let him talk of the real present day thugs – of the Trinamul Congress in Bengal whose mass rape, murder and intimidating tactics in Sandeshkhali have created headlines over the last few months.
And whose reign of terror reminiscent of the Jacobins, Stalin and Mao- who I am sure Anil admires- is what UH should have featured- but won’t for similar lack of guts or sheer ignorance.
Jeez, makes our political landscape look like an Edwardian picnic.
Are these murderous claims and counter-claims for real? Is India really that uncivilised?
You are welcome to discuss with me on my Substack( see my response to Anils 4th April polemic for details). It’s free.
India is complex and variegated. It’s problems lie essentially in 70 odd years of Socialist dynastic rule by Congress.