How Indian diaspora has turned into Modi's security blanket
In the popular Peanuts series, in an insightful study of insecurity, one of the characters Linus, has a security blanket. Linus loves his blanket, carries it everywhere, and is not embarrassed by it. He cannot survive without it and really suffers when it is being washed.
Narendra Damodardas Modi, the sixteenth prime minister of India, since 2014 has a security blanket called the Indian diaspora. This blanket has been a few years in the making.
When Modi arrived at the John F Kennedy Airport on Friday, September 26, 2014, it was his first step on American soil since the United States denied him a visa in 2005 on the grounds that he violated religious freedoms while being the chief minister of Gujarat by failing to do enough to stop Hindu-Muslim riots. He was formally invited to visit the United States by President Barack Obama only after his party's victory in May's elections. Since then Modi has travelled approximately eight-and-a-half times around the globe in a style reminiscent of an ancient Indian tradition of marking territory.
Millennia ago, there used to be a practice of sending a white horse galloping out of the kingdom, usually by a powerful newly anointed king who wished to conquer new territory, and as it thundered across the borders of nations, none dared to stop it. Thus undisputed, unchallenged, it marked those territories for its sovereign. Neighbouring kingdoms fearfully watched its progress. The practice of Ashwamedha Yajna in ancient times is a fitting analogy for our new prime minister's globetrotting, his grandstanding, and his humongous PR exercises, for unconsciously he is following the same expansionist tradition. There are no territories to be gained, but the larger Indian nation - the Viraat Bharat - has to be reclaimed. There is a vast Indian diaspora that has to be annexed, charmed, captivated and eventually monetised. And in this version of the Ashvamedha Yagna, the sovereigns of foreign nations have to be impressed too, in no uncertain fashion, that yes, a new emperor has ascended the throne of Bharatvarsha.
While PM Manmohan Singh visited a total 27 countries during his first three years as prime minister in the UPA I government - from June 2004 to May 2007, the incumbent has visited nearly double that - 49 countries - in a similar time span of June 2014 to May 2017. As of April 2018, he has made 36 foreign trips to six continents, visiting 54 countries, including the visits to USA to attend the UN general assembly.
For any arriviste, a huge part of social acceptance is just the fact of incumbency in a prestigious position of power. That is enough for people to suspend the questioning part of their brains or simply go along with the flow to be on the status quo side of things which is perceived as beneficial. On a personal level, one may have doubts but if one is part of an organisation one is often left with no choice. The invitations to inaugurate, cut ribbons, make motivational speeches, will be sent. The group photos will be taken. The quotes and references will happen in conferences, seminars and public meetings.
All the fact-finding and dozens of articles or questions during Zero Hour will not change that. Power is seductive, in fact it is the biggest aphrodisiac. To cite just one example in the barrage of U-turns and lies, in 2014, Modi had promised one crore (10 million) jobs. According to the Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour and Employment, he delivered 155,000 in 2015 and 231,000 in (April-December) 2016. That he has promised 70 lakh (seven million) jobs in this fiscal alone is not given the benefit of the doubt by his gushing admirers abroad.
In the catchy sounding "Bharat Ki Baat, Sabke Saath" at Westminster's Central Hall in London, UK, with thousands of protesters outside, and a captivated echo chamber of a few hundred inside, a prime minister who has not held a single press conference in his four-year-old tenure, held forth with all his trademark bombast and melodrama, answering scripted inoffensive, non-confrontational questions - by Prasoon Joshi. Joshi is not a journalist of repute, nor a doyen of international or national affairs. He is described as a "lyricist, poet, screenwriter, and a marketer". He was also active in the BJP's 2014 election campaign, but the "ideal choice" of the interviewer was a farcical exercise of preaching to the already converted.
देश में विश्वास का माहौल स्थापित हुआ है। pic.twitter.com/b9fFnX8xBZ
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 20, 2018
When was the last time the PM was subjected to some real grilling in front of non partisan journalists? In fact, on June 27 2016, when the PM who suffers from a phobia of press conferences, gave an interview to Arnab Goswami, he was complimented for his sense of humour and a "fantastic speech" at the US Congress. Over January 19 and 20, 2018, when Modi was interviewed by Zee News and Times Now, a few days before he headed off to the World Economic Forum at Davos, he was asked tepid questions about how he manages to make friends so easily and where he gets his energy from.
सवा सौ करोड़ देशवासी मेरा परिवार हैं। जहां अपनापन है, वहां थकने का सवाल ही नहीं। pic.twitter.com/auMZ9s5eLy
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 20, 2018
In 1986, Harry G Frankfurt, the philosopher wrote an essay named On Bullshit, which was published as a book in 2005 and went on to become a bestseller. The book attempts to arrive at "a theoretical understanding of bullshit". The key difference between a liar and a, "bullshitter", the author tells us, is that the liar knows the truth and aims to deceive. The "bullshitter", on the other hand, doesn't care about the truth. He is "neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false," in Frankfurt's words. "His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says."
The "bullshitter" has understood an important truth that has become the credo of our times - that facts don't matter. So when Modi talks about criticism being essential to democracy, he is met with rousing applause and neither Prasoon Joshi, nor anyone from the charmed audience would think of asking about Dr Kafeel Khan in jail because he exposed the Adityanath government. Or Gauri Lankesh getting murdered. Nor the several high-profile attacks on Muslims by Hindus in the last two years, with the active encouragement of senior people in the ruling BJP government at the Centre. Nor will the real agenda of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar be discussed as BJP MLA Sanjay Patil from Belagavi recently revealed when he said, "This election is not about roads, water or other issues. This election is about Hindus vs Muslims, Ram Mandir vs Babri Masjid."
Security blankets don't talk back, they offer comfort. One and all, the educated NRI Modiphile will swallow that India has scientists that can produce gold out of cow urine, radiation proof bunkers out of cow shit, the economists who can prove that reduced spending is good and joblessness produces entrepreneurs. That we have historians who can prove that the Taj Mahal was a temple called Tejo Mahalaya and that we produced the first nuclear weapons and discovered the internet.
But beyond the bovine adulation of the gushing NRI and the cosy echo chamber that dulls the growing protests back home, other voices are slowly coming to the fore that should remind us that all is not well.
For the second time in four months, Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund chief said at a media conference on Thursday that Modi should pay more attention to the women in the country. International news organisations' reports speak about how the Kathua rape and murder has "split" Jammu and Kashmir along communal lines and that it is another instance of "battleground in India's religious wars". The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Economist and The Guardian have been carrying reports and editorials regularly on the fresh atrocities in India every day.
Utter disregard for human rights, crude use of state machinery for censoring critics, undermining the independence and power of the judiciary, and using both constitutional means and Hindutva foot soldiers to suppress religious freedom, at home while making platitudinous comments and cloying truisms surrounded by acolytes abroad, is at best, a temporary and illusory salve. The world has seen this pattern before. All this is the trademark of an autocrat of a banana republic grandstanding abroad while his country burns. For the patriarch who claims that 1.35 billion Indians are his family, the autumn might not be far away.