LK Advani, Narendra Modi, Yogi Adityanath. How can we overlook the striking pattern in this chronology? Sociologists say it takes about three generations for a trend begun to come to its fruition. From Advani’s Rath to Yogi bahumat, the cycle seems set to complete itself.
In 1998, many were shocked at the prospect of Advani, seen as the face of hardcore Hindutva, becoming Prime Minister. Atal became the CEO of India by default. By 2014, he looked a saint in comparison. Modi became the Hindutva mascot. And Advani the marga darshak or the wise patron. Even a few months ago, the thought of Yogi Adityanath heading UP as its Chief Minister would have seemed bizarre to many.
How quickly perceptions and possibilities change! Today, in comparison to Yogi, Modi looks what Advani did in relation to Modi merely three years ago. Barely three years ago, Nitish Kumar, the Bihar Chief Minister, could not stomach Modi as a Prime Ministerial candidate. Today he is cozying up to Modi. This is a good way of measuring our progress through time. Also, to ascertain where we are headed.
One thing is now certain. Modi is not going to be the fulcrum of India’s political destiny. He is, like it or not, only a transitional phenomenon. He is the bridge between Advani and Adityanath. So, when I saw the other day Yogi calling on Advani, as a prelude to assuming the seat of power in Lucknow, I was struck by the symbolism of it.
If Muslims and minorities think that their woes are short-lived, they need to re-think. I wrote an article, a month before UP results were announced, stating that Modi will romp home in glory. That was when the opinion polls were projecting a hung assembly or, at best, a marginal victory for BJP.
Why did I think so? Well, part intuition. Part, psychology. Part, history. Don’t forget, Napoleon had such a magnetic appeal to the French! So also Hitler. Such apocalyptic popular appeals have positive and negative ingredients. Negatively, the TINA presumption (there is no alternative). Napoleon and Hitler will save us. Positively, such characters have something in them that appeals so very deeply to the mass psyche.
But what is it? That’s the question to be asked, if you don’t mind. This is where Nitish Kumar is crucial to our understanding. What has changed within Modi in the last three years so that Nitish who was put off by him is now a grudging admirer? This is a serious matter, even if no one is asking why.
Actually it is less complicated than you may think it is. Some could find Mother Teresa admirable. Some may feel the same fervour towards Phulan Devi. Some, for the late Veerappan, the sandal wood smuggler and rustic edition of Robin Hood or Kayamkulam Kochunni. Who appeals to you depends not only on who that person is but, even more importantly, on who you are, what your tastes and value systems are.
Aristotle had this idea that some are born to be slaves. Their nature lends itself to slavery, not freedom. It is an insight that, centuries later, Erich Fromm reworked into the hypothesis of escape from freedom. A majority of people, Fromm argued in his Escape from Freedom (1941), given the opportunity, would embrace slavery rather than freedom. They would prefer, in a democracy, rulers who are dictators in disguise.
The great French Revolution (1789), that fired the imagination of so many all over Europe and even in England, was inspired by three republican ideals: liberty, equality, fraternity. The very same people welcomed Napoleon Bonaparte as their Emperor (2nd December 1804) and prostrated themselves in front of him barely a decade and a half later! The people were not ready for freedom. Frankly, no one really is and that is the nightmare.
I am amused when people ridicule Trump. They should be ridiculing themselves. Why did Trump appeal to so many American voters? And that too without having to wear the mask of hypocrisy? Was he not preferred precisely because he was what he said he was?
So, here is my prediction. (This is not for you, if you are lily-livered.) UP is a finger pointing to the future. NDA will not last beyond 2019. It is already a fossil. BJP would not need coalition partners. (Ask Shiv Sena, if you are not convinced). India, like UP, will return to single party rule in 2019. The next election will not be fought on development, as I said in 2014. Development is a mouth-filling word, but it is not deliverable on the ground.
UP was not won on development, but on communal consolidation of votes. Watch out for Tamil Nadu. What happens there in the next few months will be more important than you might realize immediately. Rajanikant is, after all, a Maharashtrian, not a Tamil!
Days ahead are going to be difficult for religious minorities; especially for Muslims. It will not be communal riots any more. They could happen here and there; but nothing on the scales that we saw in 1992 and 2002. They will be broken with economics. Already all wars are wars of economics. Money, not A-bomb, is the weapon of choice.
The question that all presumably freedom-loving citizens –never mind what your religion is- need to ask is this: am I fit for freedom? In what sense do I deserve or merit freedom? Do I believe in freedom? Do I abide by the discipline of freedom?
Only the wilfully blind will continue to remain indifferent to the organic link between one’s inner depravity and the general craving for tyranny by a larger-than-life character, who of course needs to be inflated mountainously to fit that mythological role. To be enfranchised is to be able not only to choose a candidate of preference. It is also to bare your bosom in public and reveal who you are. Your choice paints who you are, and only secondarily who your candidate of preference is. And that is the core problem, even if it is unpleasant to admit it.