Our huge expectations of Modi are coming back to haunt us

I distinctly remember, before LK Advani's rathyatra in 1990, the middle class was hermetically sealed from communalism. Communal riots were something that happened among the working class. It was a ritual, a show of force and seasonal bloodletting, usually incited by local level politicians with tacit support of the police. It was distasteful, but it happened.

However, from the rathyatra, the serendipitous telecast of Ramayana and Mahabharata, the rise of the saffron brigade, to the elevation of the BJP from almost nothing to double digits in the Lok Sabha, everything changed.

Middle class, conservative Hindu India which always had a deep and dormant mistrust for the Muslims, (since the two-nation theory and Partition) suddenly felt justified in championing this new Hindu identity. It was a result of the half-baked mixture of late-19th century Western ideas of socialism and nationalism with the revivalism of ancient Indianness, as propounded by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the Hindu right and paradoxically, Mahatma Gandhi. This meant one had to either accept the Indo-Persian-British synthesis as the basis of our culture and be called modern, secular, elitist, leftist or anti-Hindu or anti-India, or skip the Muslim era entirely and hark back to a dim past for our core identiity and be called rightist, chauvinist, patriot, grassroots, casteist and anti-Muslim! Both identities - since they are essentially muddle-headed and simplistic fiction - have created huge wounds in our social fabric.

However, there is one reality we cannot escape. Every sane mind of the 21st century society understands the secondary nature of superstitions born 2,000 years ago in the current scheme of things and their inadequacy to give our lives meaning today. The Vajpayee government recognised this double-headed hydra. It did not pick on the festering wounds or scrape at the scabs of pent-up emotions. We had a working right, just like a working left, that carried on with a semblance of clarity and sanity.

Then the inertia and incredible incompetence in the last term of the UPA failed all of us to such an extent that we were willing to give a chance to anyone - we tried our best to give it to Anna Hazare. He tripped. Then we tried the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). They also tripped. We gave the chance to Narendra Modi, who had the backing of a national party, the largest, most organised, national alternative - and they were there at the right place and the right time with the right sound bites.

But the euphoria is wearing off now. The huge expectations raised are now coming back to haunt us as we see the lack of change. It's the same old, with more fear, paranoia and anger. The middle class's pact with destiny - "give us our growth and we'll look the other way when blood spills" - has led to only bloodletting. The opposition, instead of using the years to reorganise itself out of its torpor, is digging itself into a shallow grave. If we have to go by recent evidence, for the tax paying and black-moneyed Indian, the choice now is between two evils: for India to be a second rate stagnant joke of a country with some of its pluralism intact; or a second rate bully eating away at its own innards and imploding. It's only by recognising these available choices can we envision a better India.