Only Modi

Every fascist is a moderniser and it all begins with a misreading of history. Modi feels Patel was given a raw deal and that he is a continuation of The Sardar by other means. He has reduced the State to himself. People claim he has national ambitions but his nation is a globalised view of Gujarat. He quotes the quantum of investment as an index of his stability. Even Ratan Tata has said that it would be foolish not to invest in Gujarat of the present. Modi parades the diaspora as further testimonial to himself. But Modi is a particular kind of moderniser.

He gives change a collective idiom and a privatised frame. He promises industrialists a carte blanche by creating plans for privatisation that could make Friedman blanche. Modi has privatised 40 ports and created a slew of SEZs and science cities. In fact, his image is that of a chief minister for the new industrialists. At the same time he likes to remind the dalits that he is moving beyond dominant caste politics.

As an authoritarian, he has chewed up civil society institutions. He has stated that Muslims are less than citizens till they join the mainstream; he treats secularists like unpatriotic dirt. Any one in civil society who dissents is labeled an outsider. In fact, Modi has de-institutionalised politics by making even his followers redundant and the Congress a weak wish list of himself.

Given the logic of such a style, no opposition can be external to the BJP collective. An opposition based on a competing or alternative philosophy, ideology or vision does not exist. Therefore, opposition can only be internal to the Modi frame. The Modi juggernaut can only slip on a banana peel of its own making.

Dissent therefore has to come from within. First, by those who feel they can substitute him as leader. Secondly, by those who feel they anchor him and are yet subject to benign neglect. Thirdly, from those who see his industrialising politics as a neglect of upwardly mobile rural interests. Fourth, from those who feel he doesn8217;t know how to behave so his own party members feel redundant. If you treat the above as a quiz, the answers are 1 Pravin Togadia; 2 the Leuva Patel lobby; 3 the Kolis; 4 assorted party people.

The opposition is thus composed of the VHP who feels that it patented the Modi approach. Modi8217;s real threat comes from the dominant castes, the Patidars, who feel slighted by him. The neglect of the Patels is the crystal seed of the new opposition. The creation myth of this opposition is misleading. It is attributed to the Surat floods. Nature has little to do with it. A dominant caste which switched allegiance from the Congress and Janata to Modi feels neglected. The mismanagement of the Surat flood was played up as an overt symptom of this neglect.

Interest group politics drives the Kolis, an upwardly mobile OBC rural group, to feel threatened. Their man seems too aggressively urban and industrial. They see their future as being threatened. So what we have is a combination of rebels and dissenters and assorted injured.

What accelerates this process is the politics of misbehaviour. Modi has no way of coping with dissent except through elimination. Here come his final opposition 8212; the critics at the national level of the BJP who feel and realise that dissenters can run away with local machines. Rajnath Singh insists that Modi negotiate with his Party Rebels.

What follows is the politics of surrogate celebration. A Congress coming alive as a ventriloquist8217;s opposition. There is a sadness here. It is not value or vision that drives the Congress. It is the cracks in the House that Modi built. It is an irony of democracy that the dissent within the dominant party teaches the opposition to believe in itself.

The coming defeat of Modi is difficult to time. Do the electoral numbers of the Patels, the Kolis, plus the Old Congress frame of tribes, Muslims and dalits spell an impending defeat? Or is defeat a two stage process? The first and internal one is the one we are witnessing. The second and external impact may be more gradual. Then, Modi might be damaged, ego hurt but will survive. Or will democracy punish him in its one-eyed way, not for the violence of the riots but for insulting his own party? Oddly in politics bad manners might be more self-defeating than murder. Such is the irony of electoral democracy and we must be grateful for it.

The writer is a social scientist currently based in Ahmedabad