No Banana Republic, we are an Animal Farm

The more things change, the more they remain the same!

Animal Farm is one of my favorite books. Of the little I have read, this book contains amongst the sharpest of satires. While funny in patches, I find Animal Farm to be a dark book. Dark because it talks of futility of hope, of how the masses get cheated again and again. Long back, Bharatmuni had codified the structure of fictional narratives. As per Natyashastra, each tale had to have a hero, a villain and unsurmountable odds. Yet, the tale could have no ending but a happy one. Not surprisingly, each of our ancient and not-so-ancient tales has good vanquishing evil. If not absolutely happy, at the very least, the closure is with hope of a better tomorrow.

Books like Animal Farm and 1984 run against the very basic grain of a kavya. Yet, they are probably much closer to life. After all, have not a vast majority of masses been born, have lived and died in misery with no ‘happy ending’ for them. Still, against all our awareness of stark realities, we like to be hopeful for it is probably the hope of a better future, if not for us, for our future generations which keeps us going. This may precisely be the reason why, while enjoying tales like that of the ‘Animal Farm’, we still like to believe that those are but flights of fantasy and reality can never be that bleak, that harsh!

As humans, we laugh at ostriches for burying their heads in sand in face of danger. We get amused when pigeons close their eyes when scared of snakes, thinking that the snake can no longer see it. But, these are simply base reactions driven by an urge for self-preservation. Among human beings, while children may close their eyes when scared, ‘mature’ adult may adopt a mode of denial, refusing to accept what stares them in their eyes, breathes down or grasp them by their necks. Some others, who are more directly impacted, react even more strongly and start believing that the tormentor is not really a tormentor but is doing what he is doing for a greater good.

If and only if, life was as it is hoped!

This intermittent blogger has previously criticised Arvind Kejriwal for betraying the hope of a people who were looking for a systemic change. This blogger, while being an unabashed Hindu Nationalist, has in his previous posts displayed an uneasiness with Narendra Modi. Yet, this same person had voted for the BJP and was ecstatic when results were out, simply because any alternative seemed better than the shame of a Government which had been ruling India for the last decade.

While the vote against UPA remains valid, what has been validated even more strongly are the reservations against Narendra Modi. What did India vote for? Among many other things, a promise for vyavastha parivartan, where Nation comes first, where the Government governs for the benefit of people, where old elites are trashed into dustbins of history, where a citizen is empowered enough to mould his/her own future.

But, what have we got? A thespian who only talks - in acronyms, alliterating, gloating on his supposed greatness, all the while searching for a new stage to perform? Arvind Kejriwal is condemned for indulging in theatrics and achieving little in his 49 days in power. While Arvind is justifiably condemned for having cheated the public, if the same standards of measuring output get applied, Narendra Modi’s government comes out much worse.

For a set of people who believed that UPA polluted India by its very existence, finding humungous merits in the latter’s acts has been amazingly easy. Be it the bigger issues like Aadhaar, Direct Benefit Transfer, Land-swap agreement, GST, disinvestment, FDIs in certain sectors, recovery of black money, nuclear deal with US or relatively smaller issues like declassification of the Henderson Brook Report on China War, Justice Mukherjee’s report on Netaji’s disappearance or investigation of cases of corruption (including those involving the Nation’s son-in-law), the Modi-led BJP has both spoken and acted precisely like its predecessor. And we are not even talking of going back on core agendas like Kashmir. From talking of a Congress-mukt Bharat, we now have the reality of Modi sharing toast with Sonia Gandhi on a high table. Well, the Vajpayee Government always offered Sonia Gandhi respect and space far more than what was constitutionally required. Modi is simply carrying on with the tradition. And had not the ruler pigs in Animal Farm later made peace and partnered with those very humans they had rebelled against?

How morally bankrupt this Government is if after opposing UPA’s policies for the last 1 decade, it adopted them in a duration less than what it takes us to blink? On top of the chain of turnarounds, this Government is too smug, too arrogant, too drunk on its power, to offer even a fig leaf of an excuse for its countless turn-arounds! Today, if it really believes that all its U-turns are for the benefit of the Nation, then why was it stonewalling and protesting against UPA on these very moves? Is not then, as the Congress alleges, the BJP equally responsible for the rut India was in, for the last few years? Which U-turn are we looking at next? A 'Promotion of Communal Violence Bill' because it is good for the Nation? Many of us would argue that the BJP became aware of realities once it came to power. That it is in fact a testimony to its greatness that it is carrying on with those policies which it had opposed. This argument does not hold any water for 1. the Indian Parliamentary system co-opts the opposition through various committees and standing groups where all details of any proposed legislation are analysed, 2. any bill is presented much before it is debated and even the Government of the day explains all provisions of any bill to the opposition, and 3. BJP leaders are no babe in the woods having been in power and in public sphere for years. And if they are, they are unfit to govern!

For decades, the Sangh Parivar and its various offshoots have detested Nehru (for all the right reasons, I would add). While they opposed Gandhi initially, in the last two decades or so, he has been incorporated in their phalanx of venerable National icons, to some extent out of expediency, but more because the Sangh does articulate the same thoughts as Gandhi on issues like Indian culture, conversions, morality, economy, etc.

However, while Gandhi has been co-opted, his most toxic and disastrous ‘gift’ to the Nation, Jawaharlal Nehru still remains (ostensibly) a hated figure for the Sangh. A second member of the dynasty who is hated by the Sangh Parivar, is Indira Gandhi, but in patches. The Indira of 1980-84 was not the strongly ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ Indira of 1969-77 but someone whose actions were much more to the liking of the Hindu right. It was not without reason that RSS volunteers worked primarily for the Congress(I) and not the Vajpayee led BJP in the 1984 polls. Nonetheless, the legacy of Indira (1969-1977) is too strong to overlook and is the very anti-thesis of many principles the Sangh Parivar stands for. Hence, she continues to be abhorred for her authoritarianism, her acts of weakening the edifice of institutions, in fact of the Nation, of her corrupt regime, of her cultivation of the very anti-Hindu Left, her socialism and of course, the emergency.

Strangely though, for all their visceral hatred for Nehru, Sangh/BJP leaders take great pride in recalling that Nehru had identified a young Vajpayee as a future Prime Minister and puff with pride when any of them get called ‘cast in Nehruvian mould’ or having a ‘Nehru like vision’. As such, may be it is not quite so surprising to see that the ‘chosen one’ of this very Sangh Parivar is emulating its two supposed pet hates. Like Nehru, our current Prime Minister believes that the world is his stage. And like the gullible public then believed that India’s international standing was because of Nehru, today too, people are getting drunk of a non-existent potion of India’s ‘enhanced’ stature in the world. Nehru allowed his personal predilection for communism overrule National interests. Here, Modi's government leaks info that Sujatha Singh was removed because she refused to keep the issue of Kim Davey (Purulia arms-drop) aside when dealing with Denmark. Why is that important? Because Modi had invited the Dane Prime Minister to Gujarat and his no-show on account the MEA's pressure on Denmark to resolve the Davey issue was a personal insult to Modi! So, non-arrival is a personal insult but hosting a fugitive and refusing to hand him over, is not? How so Nehruvian! 

Like Nehru, who seemed to believe that India was his personal fief and made unilateral concessions to other Nations, our current Prime Minister too seems to believe that the path to ‘statesmanship’ and a possible Nobel lies through being magnanimous with the Nation’s assets. What else can explain the unseemly haste in acceding to US demands on the nuclear deal, on food protection, on intellectual property rights, on cheap drugs for millions of poor? Maybe I am in a hopeless minority, but I could only cringe when the Indian Prime Minister seemed a tad too eager to appear ‘close’ to a lame duck POTUS without adequate reciprocation from the latter. How can then Obama be criticised for gratuitously sermonising on how should India be as a Nation? Nehru is the only Prime Minister who contributed to the sartorial taste of India. Now, after 50 long years, we have a Modi kurta to give company to a Nehru Jacket. Nehru was supposed to have his clothes laundered in Paris (maybe an archetypical tale meant to indicate Nehru’s deracination and taste for luxury). Our current Prime Minister is one up. Never to appear sans designer clothes, he now gives company to figures as illustrious as Hosni Mubarak in wearing suits embroidered with his name!

As regards emulating Indira Gandhi, does authoritarianism ring a bell? Still, for her legion of followers, India maiyya could do no wrong. For the countless Modibhaktas, at least on social media, Modi is a god who can do no wrong.

In any other land, a Prime Minister claiming that only 'personal chemistry' between leaders matter and 'commas and lines on papers do not', would have been laughed off. Strangely, while much attention has been focused on the Prime Minister's fashion sense, hardly any analyst has commented on the inanity of that particular statement. Seriously, how can an Indian Prime Minister even think that way when so many times have we been led on the garden path by more realistic foreign leaders?

I still believe that India is great Nation, that in spite of all its challenges and dysfunctionality, it is land blessed by the divine, by the presence (both past and current) of great souls. Why then do we have the type of rulers we have? And can we, the people escape blame for our rulers? How can Modi alone be blamed? Adulation is heady and self-serving. The sight of those hundreds of thousands of commoners thronging grounds in searing heat to see him, chanting his name with frenzy, wearing his masks, would make all but the really great feel that yes, I am indeed the messiah! Even now, when the last eight months of Modi rule has yielded little but song and dance, talk and more talk, people enamoured of Modi find little fault in their leader. Each U-turn gets rationalized and defended, at times with passion of fresh converts to the cause. And as far as the mainstream media is concerned, till the time the issue is Hindutva/secularism, there is little to find fault in the Government. In the run-up to General Elections 2014, on Modi being presented as an outsider to the Delhi establishment, this blogger had observed that if a person associated with the Delhi power structure for three decades and who also happened to be a 4 term Chief Minister could be termed as an outsider, then there would be hardly any ‘insider’ in the system. Sadly, I don’t find any joy in feeling vindicated.

We, the people, who have invested our hopes in Modi have a moral duty to be vigilant and ensure that our leaders don’t digress from those promises which made us vote for them. Our Nation will become great, we will become successful, not by defending the indefensible but by being demanding, questioning and forcing our leaders to perform. If we don’t, and continue to believe that all acts of our leaders are for our good, our fate will be no better and in all likelihood, much worse than those creatures of the proverbial Animal Farm.

AAP aaye bahaar aayi

The election debacle of 1993, when the BJP could win only two of the five assemblies, was in effect a decisive turning point for Hindutva politics in India. Even though the BJP later broke new ground by forming the first saffron Government in Maharashtra, the reality of its limited geographical reach across vast swathes of the country, made the dream of a BJP Government seem very distant. True, the PV Narasimha Rao led Congress Government seemed thoroughly discredited in that summer of 1996, and all polls pointed to BJP becoming the single largest party in the Parliament; still, there seemed little chance of Atal Bihari Vajpayee becoming the Prime Minister, on account of the BJP’s ‘majestic isolation’. Hence, the act of the then President, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, in going by the rule-book and inviting Vajpayee to form the Government, was seen differently by different shades of opinions.

For the secular establishment, it was a travesty of constitutional politics that a party with no chance of obtaining majority being asked to form a Government, for the non-committed, an open invite to the worst forms of political bargaining, and for the BJP supporters & sympathizers, a shot at fulfillment of a decades old dream!

On a personal note, I recall watching the live telecast of the swearing in ceremony, with tears in my eyes. Those were of course, tears of joy for even though a BJP supporter ever since my political consciousness took shape, I had not really thought that a BJP Government was possible for the next many years. Many newspaper reports of those days record wild celebrations and emotions mirroring mine. In many ways, this swearing-in was a proof to people that the BJP, which promised hope, a different governance, could indeed come to power!

It was a short-lived government. Snide comments like ‘Inhone to sirf tareekh mein naam darz karane yeh sarkar banayee thi’, abound and many within the BJP had started talking about the ‘blunder’ and how it had harmed the image of the party.

Hindsight proved that forming that Government, even if for a fortnight, was a masterstroke. By providing the masses with a teaser of a full-fledged government and more importantly, proving that the BJP was a serious contender to power, BJP polled incremental votes from those who were unsure about it. The party’s vote-share, which hovered at around 20% in both the 1991 and 1996 polls, shot up to over 25% in 1998, which incidentally, remains its best showing till date.

How relevant is reminiscing on a decade and half old events?

Very much relevant, because, on a smaller scale, history was repeated at Ramlila Maidan on Saturday, December 28, 2013.

While some may compare the exploits of NTR with that of Arvind Kejriwal, the fact remains that the 1983 victory of Telugu Desam was driven on the wheels of a charismatic God-like personality, who promised to salvage the wounded Telugu pride. On the other hand, the Aam Aadmi Party was led by a virtually faceless individual with a campaign built around mundane issues of corruption and civic amenities, hardly the stuff which manage to arouse passion in voters.

Thank God that Arvind Kejriwal had more sense than the numerous ‘specialists’ found in abundance in television studios. Had he listened to them, he would have buried his movement many a times over: first when he co-shepherded the anti-corruption movement, second, when he launched his solo fast, again, when he launched his political party, once again, when he campaigned against high electricity tariffs, yet again when he decided to run against Sheila Dikshit, over again when he committed the ultimate sacrilege of asking people’s opinion on accepting Congress’s support! Many of these experts have denounced the last act to be a mockery of democracy. If democracy is indeed the will of the people it belies understanding on how can reaching out to people for their opinion be declared a mockery? Is it that we have become so attuned to being treated as vote-casting machines that any exercise of opinion in between those five years seems so much out of the ordinary?

Whatever be the story a few months or years down the lane, as of now, we have lived through a defining moment of our lives when a rank outsider, riding on support of those disdainfully dismissed as non-consequential, has achieved which only weeks back, seemed an impossible dream. As of now, it is difficult to visualize that politics, the way it is practiced will not undergo any change in the days to come.

Had it not been for the AAP, it is quite likely that the insipid Vijay Goel of the BJP would have won the race to the chief ministership. Given that its 15 years exile from power has been extended yet again, it s understandable that much of the BJP’s vitriol has now been directed towards the AAP. Perhaps it fears that the success of AAP, if replicated even on a limited manner Nationally, would seriously impair its quest for power.

What the BJP seems to be missing out is that its attacks on Arvind Kejriwal and AAP more and more resemble the establishment’s campaign against Narendra Modi. Many BJP sympathizers claim that Modi is despised more because he does not ‘belong’ to the inner circle and his coming would draw curtains on many a cosy arrangements within those hallowed groups. If a four term chief minister who had even otherwise spent decades in those byzantinian lanes of Delhi could be termed as an outsider, then someone like an Arvind Kejriwal could well claim to be an alien from the outer space!

If constant tirades, ill founded in logic were a weapon enough to sway voters, then BJP has certainly adopted the right strategy. However, if that be true, then the BJP risks losing much more as the Congress, JDU and many others have adopted precisely the same strategy against it.

The BJP would do well to recognize that the vote for AAP was not a vote against Congress alone. It was a strong rejection of the BJP as well. The masses who voted for AAP did so amidst genuine fears of a Congress comeback on account of the anti-Congress votes getting split in between the AAP and the BJP. That people took this risk in their stride should be a powerful enough indicator to the BJP top brass that in public imagination, it was seen as being in cahoots with the Dikshit Government. In the last 15 years of Delhi and the last 10 years at the Centre, what exactly has the BJP done to prove that it is truly an opposition party? Which major decision of the UPA has the BJP opposed and opposed till its logical conclusion? Its campaigns against the UPA have seemed half hearted and fought more in television studios and in form of Parliamentary disruptions, rather than getting manifest on the street, fighting for issues impacting the common man.

In the recently concluded Parliament session, the BJP had a good chance to bring down this Government by pushing for a no-confidence motion. But for reasons known only to a few, it decided that the Government had lost its ‘moral majority’ and hence was as good as out of power. Is it so? And now, when the UPA comes up with another fiscally disastrous budget/vote on account or manages to promulgate some anti national ordinances, can the BJP really claim that it was not a party to those acts?

An opposition which does not function like an opposition does not deserve to be ever in power. The BJP has a clear choice – of identifying the ‘enemy’ and going for its jugular or of falling back to the act of a loyal opposition. It cannot continue to act as if Nuclear Deal, 2G, Coal Scam, Vadra, CWG, Black Money, are issues one moment and non-issues the other. Blessed with such an opposition, is it a wonder that we have had UPA 1 followed by UPA 2?

In the next few months, the Nation too will have to weigh two choices when opting to boot out this disgrace of a Government; one – voting for a sub-optimal choice in form of the BJP, and two – of voting for AAP and many other parties who one believes are best suited to resolve the Nation’s issues.

If a large chunk of the electorate opts for the latter option, it would be fair to say that the Congress has a very high chance of returning to power. Neither AAP nor any other contender has even a truncated all-India presence and all these entities would find it much easier to prop up a Congress led Government. For all our faults, India certainly does not deserve a UPA 3 and it would be an understatement to call this a tragedy if it thus happens.  

It is for the BJP to decide if it wants to be perceived as a worthy alternate to the UPA. It is neither AAP nor any motley group of activists, but its own sense of hubris, which is standing in its way to power.