But when I listened to the Prime Minister’s admirers listing his glorious achievements it struck me that there was one that his fans had missed:
Narendra Modi has not only shifted the terms of Indian political discourse, he has moved the goalposts and completely redefined the competing ideologies of Indian politics.
No other prime minister, not even Indira Gandhi, managed to do this.
It is a thought that first struck me when I read the obituaries of AG Noorani, the distinguished lawyer and political commentator. And I was reminded again of the same thing when I read the obituaries of Sitaram Yechury.
Let’s start with Noorani. There was a phase in the 1980s when I knew him extremely well. I used to edit a monthly features magazine called Imprint and he was one of our star, regular contributors. Almost from the time he began writing for us, people would ask me about him. Some of it had to do with his unforgiving, stubborn nature and his habit of suddenly falling out with people who, he believed, did not measure up to his exacting standards. Every time I met Soli Sorabji for instance, he would ask me, “So have you fallen out with Noorani yet?”
Noorani’s brilliance was undeniable but his politics were not always popular in the context of the 1980s. He was extremely right wing and often expressed a pitying contempt for communists. His idol and role model was A.D. Gorwala, a former civil servant who ran Opinion, a small circulation journal that had been consistently critical of Jawaharlal Nehru and of Nehruvian thought. Gorwala was a man of unimpeachable integrity, both financial and intellectual, and often took positions that would alienate his friends.
Noorani was a little like that. He was not an old style Parsi intellectual like Gorwala (he was a Gujarati Muslim) but he had a similar lack of patience with the left leaning consensus that was the dominant school of thought in that era. For instance, he strongly supported America’s involvement in Vietnam and had a withering contempt for those who opposed it.
I did not agree with Noorani on most things and saw his policies (strongly pro death penalty, for instance) as conforming to a classic right wing mentality. But he was painstaking and hard-working. I respected him and spent many hours chatting to him and regularly carried his articles.
While I lost touch with Noorani over the decades I was always aware of what Sitaram Yechury was doing. I had first heard of him as a firebrand student leader at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He had bravely opposed the emergency (during which he had been arrested). He had asked Indira Gandhi to step down from her position as chancellor of JNU.
And later he became a major CPM leader and continued to oppose the Gandhis. In keeping with his ideology, he was a harsh critic of the US and its involvement in world affairs.
But he was never blinkered in his world view. He was not, despite his antipathy towards America, as rabidly opposed to the India US nuclear deal as many of his colleagues were. And he was willing to work with other parties to influence governments to do more for the poor.
“In the Modi era right wing has been defined in a completely new way. If you’re right wing then you are pro Hindu or anti Muslim. Everything else is negotiable.”
Most unusual: he had no desire for position or ministerial office. He was not from Kerala or Bengal where the CPM used to form governments and turned down offers to join the Congress where he would almost certainly have become a minister. He believed in his own party and its communist ideology and refused to consider shifting sides.
In the 1990s, when I knew both Noorani and Yechury, I thought of them as being at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. Yechury was horrified by what America was doing to the world just as he had been appalled by its involvement in Vietnam and Nicaragua. And when he moved even slightly away from his Marxist moorings, it was towards a Nehruvian vision of India.
Noorani had no patience with communists, believed that America had been unfairly targeted by the left and put his faith in the capitalist system.
And yet, here’s the thing. When both men died within a month of each other, the same people paid the same sorts of tributes to both of them. There was very little in the obituaries to suggest that they were ideologically opposed to each other or even that they existed on different ends of the political spectrum.
Why was this?
I put it down to just one factor: the role of the BJP and especially Narendra Modi in changing the axis around which Indian politics revolves Until the Advani-Modi kind of BJP came along, it was possible to draw (with some tweaks) a distinction between left and right in Indian politics. But as the BJP has grown stronger, the term right wing (still used by BJP supporters to describe themselves) has lost all meaning.
The traditional definition of left and right is framed in terms of big government (the left supports it; the right does not), free enterprise (the right wants it but the left is sceptical), liberal economic policies (an article of faith for the right but not popular with the left).
If you use these distinctions then there is nothing right wing about the current government. The BJP believes in big government, it put its faith in various repressive agencies that Lavrentiy Beria would have been proud of, depends on welfare benefits to win it popularity and prefers oligopoly to a competitive market. Most right wing governments encourage the middle class. This government taxes the hell out of them.
In the Modi era right wing has been defined in a completely new way. If you’re right wing then you are pro Hindu or anti Muslim. Everything else is negotiable.
Those who believe in pluralism oppose the BJP and those who support a Hindu idea of India support the BJP. That’s why Noorani and Yechury were eventually spoken of in the same breath: they may have disagreed on everything but they believed in a diverse and secular India.
That perhaps is Narendra Modi greatest longterm contribution to India. Long after the fancy trains have derailed, the new highways have cracked, the expensive Parliament building has been flooded out and our neighbours have stopped talking to us, this contribution will endure.
By resetting the terms of discourse Narendra Modi has brought the old left and the old right together. Once bitter ideological opponents have joined hands and pushed back together, trying hard to sustain and protect a vision of India.
They may not agree with each other on many things. But they agree on what kind of nation India should be.
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Publish date : 2024-09-19 19:08:00
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