INDIA HAS BECOME unrecognisable over the last decade. So unrecognizable that it feels unreal. We now take for granted things that just fifteen years ago, seemed to be in the realm of the unattainable. Everything seems to have changed so fast without us even noticing.
And so, at times, a bizarre nostalgia envelops us. As a random example, let’s take a passenger train journey from Chennai to the Northeast. It was habitual to expect a week-long delay in those days. Today, the first Google search result yields “Chennai - Dimapur flight.”
Then there’s the dissipated tribe of the hunter-gatherers of political news who were once ubiquitous; some among this tribe describe themselves as news vultures. They now yearn for scandalous or scam-infested headlines only to discover that a new normal has replaced those glory old days. The scam fountain seems to have dried up over the past decade.
Just last month, we were treated to quite a public spectacle in which furious IAS officers wrote a letter of protest to the Prime Minister against the open office plan in the new Kartavya Bhavan building. The source of their fury was the deprivation of the cushy old order which included sprawling airconditioned private offices equipped with lounges to take naps during working hours. Even a section officer in the ancien régime had his personal fiefdom — a largish private cabin, which in the letter’s wording, facilitated “our critical thinking and confidentiality.”
What’s even worse is this: by itself, the very nomenclature — Kartavya Bhavan — literally shatters the vestiges of what these buildings had really symbolised. They were monuments of blood-soaked, blood-sucking and heartless imperialism. Rajpath has now become Kartavya-Path and Central Secretariat, Kartavya Bhavan. In other words, from high-handedness to duty to the people of India. Indeed, the bedrock of the Indian civilisation and the Indian work ethic is Dharma which is also defined as Kartavya or duty.
Like I said, India has become unrecognisable over the last decade.
The aforementioned examples are just tiny slices of the comprehensive national transformation that has occurred under Narendra Modi.
The late PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee seeded this process with his farsighted New Telecom Policy, the Golden Quadrilateral, reforms in banking and investment, and charting an innovative foreign policy. The fact that he splendidly succeeded in the endeavour is more the remarkable given that he operated in a cannibalistic era of coalitions in which all parties except the BJP had a truly national vision. Despite these admirable successes, all that Vajpayee could manage was to change the paint of the inherited British imperialistic apparatus but left its structure untouched.
NARENDRA MODI not only altered the structure but excavated its very foundations and showed the country the rot and the skeletons buried underneath it for so long. Two definitive pointers to this rot include a recalcitrant bureaucracy and an unaccountable judiciary, both of which had been supported by the vast and entrenched Congress ecosystem. Every political regime which has a long innings spawns a loyal elite, which is as noble or as corrupt as its political masters. Bhoja Raja and Krishnadevaraya’s elite included philosophers, saints and poets. The character of the Congress elite is best left unsaid.
In many ways, Modi astutely learned invaluable lessons from the Vajpayee Prime Ministership, foremost of which was the realisation of the inevitability of an absolute majority. The transformation that he has wrought in just a single decade is the direct outcome of this learning.
The contrast screams at us: the decade prior to Narendra Modi not only undid the good that Vajpayee had done but opened our country up to every secessionist and nation-wrecker who wanted India to remain squalid or to break it up. If the post Rajiv Gandhi period was defined by chaos, the Modi clime exemplifies stability.
TRANSFORMATION IS first lived and then analyzed in hindsight. The infinite canvas of history also shows us that transformation is cyclical.
We never realised when or how the UPI revolution occurred.
We didn’t notice how the Modi government weeded out the seedy brokers who had held India’s defence hostage at the altar of personal profiteering, thereby sacrificing national security on the same altar.
We rarely pause to appreciate the enormity of the fact that since 2014, there have been no Jihadi attacks on Indian soil once every six weeks.
We do occasionally celebrate a momentous headline that informs us that Maoist terror has almost been exterminated. Nor do we marvel at how, after an eon, fully functional schools are running in Gadchiroli, once a Maoist hub.
We learned that Article 370 was abolished only when the matter was introduced in Parliament.
We witnessed the cleansing of public discourse after it was freed from the clutches of a legacy journalistic tribe that extorted businessmen, fixed ministries, blackmailed bureaucrats, intimidated Chief Ministers and sent legal notices to those who questioned its reporting ethics.
We don’t fully fathom the manner in which Pakistan was transformed into an absolute pariah even within the community of Muslim nations; we were caught by surprise at the manner in which India stared down China at Galwan, and finally, we are yet to grasp the secret of how the US has been forced to take India seriously to the point of frustration, best voiced by Peter Navarro’s recent slur against Brahmins.
These are clearly not ordinary transformations and Modi is still in the infancy of his third term and if anything, he seems to have grown stronger despite a reduced Lok Sabha majority.
AUDACITY, AMBITION AND SCALE underscore these transformations, and the proof is in the pudding. Direct bank transfer, demonetisation, GST and an unapologetic “India-first” foreign policy are some of the most pronounced manifestations. All of these are irreversible. Nary an opposition party will risk condemning direct cash transfer without incurring serious damage to its political survival. The discussion about GST is not that it should be reversed but only about its nuances. The Congress party’s sustained abandonment of India’s national interest is at the root of the abyss it finds itself in.
A relentless pursuit of national vision and a larger-than-life element are visible in all these. Especially in his first term, Narendra Modi simply focussed on the basics and continues to do so — scaling the economy through wealth creation at the level of the individual citizen and creating national assets on the macro level. In layman’s language, it reaffirms an eternal truth: every door automatically opens for a rich man without his asking.
Indeed, a dogged refusal to address and fix the basics for about seven decades is the source of most of India’s problems: infrastructure, education and health. From this perspective, Narendra Modi is simply engaged in the work of national reconstruction, which had to begin in 1947 but was wildly derailed and destroyed by a new elite whose only qualification was “trading in patriotism,” to borrow the late D.F. Karaka’s phrase. One is reminded of an old cartoon in Shankar’s Weekly. It shows a husband and wife hailing from Delhi’s perfumed elite cringing before Jawaharlal Nehru. In the caption, the husband tells the Prime Minister: “Well, Panditji, if you can’t spare an ambassadorship, maybe you can give us some extra petrol coupons.” Further commentary is unnecessary.
India had to wait for Vajpayee’s Prime Ministership to get a four-lane national highway for the first time. There are a couple of generations still alive that remembers the notorious octroi gates infesting our highways; it was an antiquated economic menace that prompted a stalwart like Nani Palkhivala to write a ferocious essay calling for its summary removal. And now, we have two generations that assume that our highways were always like this.
The same truth applies to a prolonged era of prolonged powercuts. The sweeping reforms that Modi ushered in in his first term has pretty much obliterated this torment.
As for healthcare, there is enough historical data to show that our government-run hospitals had worked infinitely better under British rule.
And as for education, the less said the better. But as we noted, it all boils down to the basics.
The key point to note in these areas is the fact that they are classified as state subjects. Narendra Modi’s efforts at national reconstruction has and continues to be hampered by non-BJP state governments which seem to regard him as an enemy to be vanquished than as a partner working for the interest of the same country that they are citizens of but that he belongs to a different political formation.
This enmity clearly showed itself during the two-term UPA regime. The unfinished stretches of the Golden Quadrilateral were deliberately halted for a decade lest Vajapyee’s fame fly higher than that of the Nehru dynasty. While this was the tangible manifestation of the enmity, every reform and policy that NDA-1 had planned or implemented was either reversed or scrapped.
Rahul Gandhi’s rhetoric and activism over the last decade not only reeks of personal vengeance against Narendra Modi but threatens to undo India itself. His global Far Left friends and other political allies pose no ordinary threat to India’s sovereignty.
The same divisive script is also being played out most notably in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Ever since the DMK reoccupied office, it has revived the old Dravidian separatist narrative and elevated it to truly sinister levels. A powerful chunk of its ideologues has normalised an imaginary “invasion of the Vadakkans” in the public discourse in Tamil Nadu. The term Vadakkan is a derogatory reference to north Indians, all of whom, in the Dravidian mythology, are Aryas, or Brahmins.
Kerala showcases an entirely different — and a more dangerous story altogether.
All this is a shameful commentary on this breed of the legacy Indian political class. Juxtapose this with Donald Trump’s praise for Modi’s obsession for making India great again and we get this logical question: why are Modi’s Indian opponents unable to see what an American president sees?
THIS BRINGS US to another contrast. The late P.V. Narasimha Rao is widely and justly regarded as a transformational Prime Minister; he was indeed better than all the Prime Ministers of the Nehru dynasty combined, and his renown rests on the game-changing economic reforms he unleashed. In other words, in his undoing of Nehru’s moth-eaten, socialist legacy. Yet, history proves that his reforms were the outcome of foreign pressure. Sans this, it is doubtful whether his own party would have allowed him to pursue this course.
Ever since Narendra Modi made his bid for Prime Minister in 2013, his tenor and content of his promised transformation has been consistent in both promise and delivery. It was entirely his own vision unlike that of Narasimha Rao; it was also an unabashed declaration of the end of the old ways — schismatic vote-hunting, secularism, corruption, cowardice, and communism. Modi’s new charter was premised on civilisational strength, which was left to lie dormant and allowed to decay for seven decades. This plus his demonstrated success record as the three-term Chief Minister of Gujarat.
Till date, the most vicious denouncers of Modi denounce him for precisely this reason: his candid projection of strength and his willingness to deploy it both at home and abroad. The Nehru clan and its extended political durbar had created four generations of a surreal specimen endowed with two defining traits.
The first was cowardice and inferiority complex vis a vis the white skin. Nothing else explains the only objection from Nehru to C. Rajagopalachari’s elevation as independent India’s first Governor General: he wore a dhoti and followed Hindu social etiquette.
The second included opportunism and characterlessness. This specimen naturally finds strength unnerving and regards Aman ki Asha as the most courageous response to a Pakistani terror attack. One is reminded of Faulkner’s insight that the discovery of the true strength that lies within us inspires the greatest fear.
Both these traits still guide every opposition to genuine reform and drags down every effort which ensures that India gets the respect that it deserves on the global stage. When he was Telecom Minister in 2003, Arun Shourie had summed up this mindset quite well:
“We have become what an American author calls ''Negaholics''- addicted to the negative as an alcoholic is to drink…We look for, we latch on to the negative…our instinct is not to believe evidence of [an] accomplishment…
“Because of my work, I have had occasion to travel abroad several times in the past two-three years. Each time I have been struck by the contrast between the way India is looked upon abroad, and the way we look upon it here.
“There is an equally telling symptom here at home - there is much greater confidence in the Indian industrial class than there is in the rhetoric of politicians who ostensibly are shouting on behalf of and to save that industry!
“The result is our discourse continues to be mired in fear, so many of us just keep repeating slogans of 30 years ago. We should listen to the new India.”
Narendra Modi has clearly infused a greater level of confidence, and India is a much bigger economy than it was when Vajpayee demitted office in 2004. Back then, the Congress and its buddies, through a series of backroom deals, succeeded in keeping the BJP out of power and reversed the economic gains the NDA had made for the country, to put it mildly.
Few people realise the kind of global clout that India wields under Modi’s leadership thanks to the engineered chaos on social media and on the ground. The chaos is a calculated attempt to bury the reality of India’s ascent and it is simply the latest Avatar of the old Congress - Communist screenplay: a shrill and relentless dissemination of poverty porn, women’s safety, “Hindu terror,” tribal oppression, injustice to farmers, etc. But this time, a new lethal dimension has been added: unpredictable, random but regular eruptions of street violence leading to a situation of quasi anarchy. A majority of these disruptions are orchestrated abroad and implemented by their Indian agents with the ultimate goal of regime change.
This among others is the surest proof of the aforementioned global clout that India has acquired.
But an even more definitive proof came in the form of Peter Navarro’s openly racist slur: “I would simply say to the Indian people, please understand what is going on here. You’ve got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people. We need that to stop.”
Navarro’s statement is the most recent reaffirmation of an infallible truth of the colonial history of the West: every anti-India rhetoric begins with a veneer of sophistication and ends in Brahmin-bashing. Believing that Peter Navarro actually knows anything at all about Brahmins constitutes a revolt against reason. He is merely parrotting the spurious thesis first concocted by colonial European missionaries, which was further embellished by a wide spectrum of deracinated Hindus. But the fact that he felt compelled to utter that rhetoric shows the unease of the Trump administration with regard to Narendra Modi.
INDIA’S REASSERTION of self-confidence is essentially rooted in its Hindu civilisational mettle. Navarro’s statement specifically targetting Brahmins betrays the fact that the rest of the world views India as a Hindu country notwithstanding ideological or political sophistry.
It wasn’t a coincidence that Modi got the world community to declare June 26 as International Yoga Day. It was a springboard of sorts to steadily recover and reclaim Bharatavarsha’s spiritual and cultural footprint spread across the world.
His 2018 visit to the 125-year-old Shiva temple in Muscat reminds us of three centuries of Hindu mercantile dominance in the Persian Gulf helmed primarily by the Sindhi and the Kutchi Bhatiyas, and Marwaris; it also reminds us of the now forgotten Govindaraja Temple built by the Pushtimargis.
The same holds true for the cordial bond that India has now forged with all countries in Brhad-Bharata (now known as Southeast Asia), Suriname, Fiji and Maldives (a corruption of the original term, Mala-Dvipa).
I DISTINCTLY RECALL a meeting with Narendra Modi years ago, in which he gave a memorable answer to a question related to a core character of the Sanatana culture. He likened it to the mat on which traditional Sadhus sit for meditation. Both its ends rise upwards due to the weight of the person sitting on it. If you try to forcibly hold down one end, the other springs up with redoubled force. And vice versa. The timeless history of Hindu Dharma shows precisely this — every vandal or world-conqueror who tried to destroy Sanatana Dharma eventually ended up destroying himself. True wisdom thus lies in cultivating a sense of balance and equanimity by sitting in the centre of the mat, preferably in penance.
We detect this keen philosophical understanding in most of Modi’s cultural and spiritual initiatives, including but not limited to the rebuilding of the Rama Mandir, the Mahakal corridor, the Kashi corridor, etc.
This list does not include the manner in which he has facilitated hundreds of visible and invisible endeavours at bringing the Hindu narrative back to where it belongs: in the hands of the community.
Unfortunately, there is no dearth of some sections of Hindus who castigate him as “Maulana” Modi and hurl similar invectives at him. The origins of this strange psyche become understandable when placed in the backdrop of history. But in general, it is wise to take a long and equanimous view to implement lasting changes.
The reality of the last seven decades shows that Hindu politicians who espoused secularism have proven to be the greatest betrayers of their own spiritual and cultural inheritance; they have also been the vilest vilifiers of their own Devatas. And so, the real combat should be directed at such Hindu politicians instead of at Modi.
This phenomenon is eerily similar to the heart-rending Orations of Libanius, one of the last sages of Pagan Rome, who lamented the extinction of Classical Rome at the hands of Christians who had succeeded in converting vast swathes of his former comrades who were now zealously demolishing all the ancient temples, altars and sacred sites of divination where the Roman Gods had once directly spoken to their devotees.
FOR ALL THE admirable achievements notched up in the previous decade, areas of improvement exist, and nothing is more vital or urgent than education — more specifically, what is known as humanities.
It is well-known that the Marxists were able to create three generations of traitors by capturing the educational establishment and it is still the wealthiest fixed deposit that is giving them solid returns. This is also the domain that the Modi government has paid the least attention to. It is my studied view that the Government should exit the business of micro-managing education; its role must be that of a regulatory and oversight body than that of an official policymaker.
Since time immemorial, education in India was community-driven, a fact which even the British realised quite early in their rule. Here is Grant Duff’s candid confession on the subject:
[The English] will see that no good can be effected for [Indians] but only much harm, by introducing English methods [of education], foreign to the characters and conditions of Indians…
Apart from Macaulay’s ill-fated Minute, the British didn’t formulate or enforce things like language and culture policy. This aberration was introduced after India achieved a questionable freedom.
Decolonisation is another element inextricably woven into education and culture. While Modi emphasised on this aspect a couple of years ago in his Red Fort speech, the task is generational and requires citizen participation at all levels. It should ideally begin at home.
As noted earlier, the Kartavya Path and the Central Vista is the most concrete expression of decolonisation but its full success will eventually be realised when our minds are decolonised. The late Sri Dharampal — perhaps the greatest champion of decolonisation — memorably wrote that the Rashtrapati Bhavan must be converted into a museum showcasing the horrors of British colonial rule. If that is done, it will be akin to an economic and cultural holocaust museum of human history.
Overall, one decade of Narendra Modi’s Prime Ministership has been a force for national good. He has wheeled in an era in which airports and seaports vie with one another in proclaiming their credentials as to which one is more efficient and profitable. He has infused a spirit of daring among Indian youth — a whole new ecosystem of startup founders and gig workers whose dreams are cemented by personal and financial freedom and we see them walking around with a brash air of confident swagger.
Above all, Narendra Modi has been a catalyst for recovering our cultural heft and a unifier that an India, splintered under secularism, had been awaiting.
Happy birthday, Sri Narendra Damodardas Modi!
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