In the ongoing campaign to throw at
Narendra Modi whatever dirt one can find, Ramachandra Guha (“Degradation of
Discourse”, Times of India, 6 Jan.
2014) accuses him of yet another flaw: the use of foul language against political
opponents. His article is illustrated with a photograph of Modi chatting with
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Now, maybe Modi has improperly called Rahul
Gandhi a spoiled mama’s boy, which we all know to be untrue: from poor
beginning, Rahul climbed his way up, and he only reached his present position
by virtue of hard work. It is just slander to suggest that his family had
anything to do with it. Yet, for foul language, the prize undoubtedly goes to Manmohan
Singh. He has just recently accused Modi of being guilty for the post-Godhra
riots; the allegation itself is worn-out, but the platform from where it was
made, was higher than usual. Most people would rather be accused of a
privileged birth than of responsibility for a massacre.
Singh thereby ignored and overruled several
Courts that have acquitted Modi of any such allegations. We might expect such
contempt of court from leftist agitators like Teesta Setalwad, herself
embroiled in judicial proceedings for riots-related deceit, as it simply illustrates
the usual self-righteousness of the left. We might also expect it from foreign
press correspondents, babes in the wood who trustingly borrow from the less
than truthful media accounts they are fed by their Indian sources. But such
contempt of he judiciary is simply unbecoming of a Prime Minister.
So, others propose different allegations,
this time based on reality. They say, for instance, that after all, “Modi is an
RSS man”. Having been groomed in the RSS ranks, Modi will find it hard to
refute that one.
Vajpayee
In the 1990s, the prospect of the BJP
coming to power led to some shrill reactions. It was going to throw a hundred
million Muslims into the Indian Ocean, come down on women and Dalits, and more
such horror scenarios. The “experts” concerned can count themselves lucky that
this was just before the internet age, because today the quotations would come
to haunt them. They would be laughed out of court for relying on their
“secularist” contacts and parroting the dirtiest propaganda. At any rate, at
august gatherings like the Annual South Asia Conference of Madison, Wisconsin,
many professors grimly predicted the worst. Not that they were concerned about
the prospective victims: the more the better, for they would only prove what a
monster this BJP was.
Those few who sincerely wanted to minimize
the damage which the BJP was sure to do, pinned their hopes on A.B. Vajpayee,
the “moderate” contrasted with the “extremist” L.K. Advani. Alas, the
specialist Prof. Paul Brass dashed all their hopes: “I think Vajpayee is a
dyed-in-the-wool RSS man.” So, the man upheld in 2014 by Guha as a model of
civility contrasting with the foul-mouthed Modi, was thought in 1996 to be
another Hitler sure to work a catastrophe. That is why he ended up abolishing Parliament
and killing all those millions when he served as Prime Minister in 1998-2004.
Or, wait a minute, did he fail to do that? Was the consensus of the experts
proven wrong by reality? Maybe the RSS is not such a predictor of inhumanity
after all. (But it is true that Vajpayee in person thwarted Congress secularism
in action when he helped Sikh taxi-drivers during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.)
All the same, Modi’s beginnings in the RSS
did not stand in the way of his economic breakthroughs. They did not prevent
his innocence in the post-Godhra riots, as certified by the courts. They did
not even keep a number of Muslims from voting for him. The reason is that the
RSS is not altogether evil.
Relief
The role of the RSS in saving Congress
politicians’ lives during the Partition,
or holding the Srinagar airport until the troops arrived, thus making the
reconquest of Pak-held territories possible (1947), or the RSS’s services in
the defence against the Chinese invasion (1962), have largely been forgotten.
What Modi has consciously experienced, however, is the RSS’s opposition against
the Emergency dictatorship (1975-77). Many secularists like to ignore this
episode because they themselves do not have such clean hands. Indeed, being
naturally despotic, the Nehruvian secularists used precisely this intermezzo to
insert “secular, socialist” into the text of the Constitution. The declaration
of India as a “secular” republic, without a proper parliamentary debate, is
thus the only part of the Constitution that is historically undemocratic.
Even
closer in time is the frequent and large-scale RSS intervention in relief work
after floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters. While the relief work of
a Mother Teresa or a Graham Staines is always highlighted (and their ulterior
missionary motives purposely ignored), journalistic or academic publications on
the RSS somehow always forget to acknowledge its charitable work.
While the RSS has many mediocre and
unimaginative people in its ranks (but committed and disciplined enough to do
the abovementioned dirty work), it also has its success stories. Among these,
Modi is no doubt one of the most spectacular. Whether he will do anything to further the
Hindu agenda remains to be seen. If Guha now praises Vajpayee, it is in the
hope that Modi will emulate Vajpayee in only being a time-server who sets aside
all Hindu concerns once power has been attained. But the amount of persistent
slander that Modi has had to face for twelve long years, now culminating in a condemnation
by the Prime Minister, may finally have convinced him of the utter viciousness
that characterizes India’s “secularists”. With him, at last, there is a real
chance that he will spite them by getting serious about Hindu interests.
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