Comments

1. 

   Ravi

   June 21, 2014 at 16:32

   Ram Guha of the secular brigade, an attention seeker, a sycophant of the dynasty, keeps harping on Modi's perceived divisive communal personality. What he doesn't realize is that his perception is based on his pre-conditioned mind which is dogmatic due to rigid sociological studies. Modi's victory is the best thing that happened to India ever since its enslavement more than 1000 years ago due to Islamic invasion and later the British Raj. 2014 is the real year of independence and not 1947. Ram Guha with his permanent secular opaque glasses is unable to fathom this remarkable achievement of the Hindus.
2. 

   Chinmay

   June 21, 2014 at 17:33

   Guha's critique of Modi simply does not hold up on several counts. For instance: "...during the election campaign Modi mostly stayed clear of speaking on Hindu-Muslim relations. There were exceptions, as in Assam... ...Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh..." There were 'positive' "exceptions", too. On 27 October 2013, Modi addressed a huge rally in Patna, Bihar. Bombs -- suspected to be planted by the Indian Mujahideen -- killed 6 and injured 85 at the rally. Modi, speaking minutes after the blasts, counselled calm and ended his speech with the following words in Hindi: "Do you Hindus want to fight Muslims? [Crowd: No!] Do you Muslims want to fight Hindus? [Crowd: No!] Is poverty not the enemy of Muslims? Is poverty not the enemy of Hindus? Then let us Hindus and Muslims join together to fight poverty." These words -- spoken minutes after fatal bomb attacks, to his terrified, confused and angry supporters --- defined his later campaign all through 2013 and 2014. Yet Guha cannot find it in himself to mention this. In addition, Modi spoke specifically of Indian Muslim welfare both before and after his victory. In the campaign, he extolled the efficient usage of the Gujarat state quota for Muslims to perform their Haj pilgrimage, which compared unfavorably with other inefficient states. In his maiden speech in Parliament, he pledged to continue special economic assistance measures for Indian Muslims, comparing them to a weak limb of a body that had to be strengthened for the body to be made one strong whole. Why does Guha mention none of this? Another false portrait of Modi specifically is sought to be made thus: "... And Modi’s record on freedom of expression was appalling. He banned books and films he thought Gujaratis should not read or watch...." If this is true, it is also exactly as true of the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh government. The state of Andhra Pradesh -- Congress-run, with a Christian Chief Minister YSR Reddy in 2006 -- banned the Da Vinci Code with no objections from the Congress-led central government in Delhi. Hundreds of books and films have been banned by Indian central and local governments for decades now. To present this as unique or distinct to Modi is to wilfully mislead. Indian liberals and secularists -- or at least those who seem to consciously identify as such, like Guha -- have a blind spot in their historical understanding. That cannot escape being slipped into in this essay, and here it comes from Guha: "...Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first and longest serving Prime Minister, was not a modest man either. Yet as a keen student of history, he was wary of the adoration of the masses...." The best demolition of the cults of Gandhi and Nehru -- of the wild exaggeration of their virtues and refusal to look squarely at their many sins -- has been Perry Anderson's three essays on India in the LRB. From the third essay, After Nehru, Anderson writes of Nehru: "... Yet however self-satisfied, few politicians could write, as Nehru did before his death, that no one had ever been loved so much by millions of his compatriots. Abstemious in many other ways, and little attracted to the supernatural, his opiate – as another admirer, the Australian ambassador to India Walter Crocker, would remark – was the adoration of the people...." Guha should pay heed. The Nehru-Modi comparison must also be made on one matter (among many) which Nehru was never made to account for. In September 1948 -- a full year after Nehru had been Prime Minister of Independent India, and in full control of his armed forces -- he invaded the Princely State of Hyderabad. The population, overwhelmingly Hindu, opposed to the autocracy of the Muslim Nizam, meant that near-token military resistance was offered, and a surrender effected. Hyderabad soon merged into India. After the surrender, with the Indian Army in control, and under its nose -- at least 25,000 Hyderabadi Muslim civilians were slaughtered in riots or pogroms with either the active or passive complicity of the Indian Armed Forces. Nehru learnt of this fact in a report that he himself, among others, commissioned. What did he do? In a word, nothing. He never acknowledged this massacre -- at least 10 times and possibly 50 times more than the casualties of the 2002 Gujarat violence under Modi. He hid the report and never released it to the public. No Indian official -- military or civilian, from Nehru down -- was ever held accountable. There was no justice. No judicial investigations. No closure. By the doctrine of command responsibility -- under which Modi is held guilty, by sin of omission -- Nehru must also be judged. What should we call a man who, in full control of his armed forces, learns of their complicity in the massacre of 25,000-50,000 Indian Muslims, and hides these facts, and does nothing, and never attempts to ensure any justice or closure for the victims? The paragon of Indian liberalism and secularism? The author of the much-touted "Idea of India"? Perhaps Guha thinks so. I disagree. The tens of thousands of victims of Hyderabad 1948 would no doubt have disagreed. And that shameless double standard is exactly why most Indians have no fear of "creeping majoritarianism" under Modi. India's "secular identity" is defined and delineated by the Indian constitution, which Modi has called "India's holy book". Indian liberals should hold him to his words. As they should have Nehru. Which they have not, in the instance of Hyderabad 1948, to this day.
3. 

   Vibhaker Baxi

   June 22, 2014 at 01:08

   Mr Guha's description of Narendra Modi is the usual clichéd and concocted version typical of the left liberal Indian "secularists" and the Prospect Magazine has done little favour to its reputation of a journal of thoughtful analysis! For these breed of Indian intelligentsia, secularism is politics of appeasement, politics of vote bank and politics of social division while claiming to be the contrary. The so called "secular" parties in India have simply advanced such politics for past several decades with little benefit to their claimed vote bank at the same time filling the pockets of these parties, more importantly of the family run hegemonies these parties have been hijacked by. The people of India have tired of these false prophets of their advancement in the name of secular socialism and have voted with their hopes and aspirations for Modi. Having had to sustain an unrelenting media and the acolytes of the entrenched parties for a dozen years, is it any wonder that Modi's approach to this election was to rebut their lies and misinformation? Where due legal process did not find Modi of any wrong doing the media did its best to keep on harping on the same story hoping it would become the believed version. When Modi Government in Gujarat produced governance that became the envy of the rest of the country the media tried its best to decry that too. The people of India have basically told these pundits where to get off! India has lost its way and its momentum under the previous Government, riddled with policy and decision paralysis, corruption and cronyism and the destruction of the constitutional authority of the office of the Prime Minister at the behest of Sonia Gandhi who treats Congress Party and India as her fiefdom! If the likes of Mr Guha prefers these alternatives to Modi (as there is none other) then they are welcome to it but the real India has moved on! It would be best for these pseudo intellectuals to find something useful to do at some Western academia from whence their politics and opinions seem to be usually informed! The burden of the Brown Sahibs has finally been ended in "post independent colonial India" and not before time! It would be better for Prospect and other thinking people's journals to find alternate voices to try to present what is happening in India rather than resort to these tired old voices and their tired old dogmatic refrain!
4. 

   VL

   June 23, 2014 at 11:26

   Amazing article