Why Brand Modi is still our best bet against Hindutva

Each time you begin to think that Brand Modi is slipping and getting into a rut similar to what all brands get into, sooner than later, he surprises you with a move or a gesture or an event which seems charge the brand with fresh energy.

One would have thought that a second visit to the US within a year of the last one and covering hackneyed diplomatic ground - UNSC reforms, sustainable development, climate change - could hardly be used to set the Yamuna on fire. The first part of the visit, despite the media buildup, was predictably ordinary. The speeches were scripted in cautious diplomatic rotundity; the choreography of the meeting with G4 leaders laboured; the meeting with corporate chiefs stagey and over-rehearsed; and, the sartorial style lacking in flair. There was little to make one sit up and overcome one's fears about a brand rapidly losing its sheen.

Meanwhile, back home Brand Modi had been taking a battering from Brand Hindutva. The chief ministers of Maharashtra and Haryana competing with each other to be shamelessly regressive and slyly communal; engineered and controlled communal flare ups in Bihar and UP; blatant and opportunistic caste alliances in Bihar; an HRD minister wreaking havoc on institutions under her control, proving that Nagpur rather than Raisina Hill is where she takes her orders from; a  culture and tourism minister of appalling insensitivity - it seemed that no one was in control and that the carefully constructed  Modi highway was only a ploy to let the Nagpur juggernaut roll in.

Even on the fronts of the economy, foreign policy and administration, where it was thought that the PM had been provided relative autonomy, the brand was floundering. Setbacks on the Land Bill, the GST, taxation law changes which seemed to take us back rather than forwards - nothing seemed to be on track. The pace of investments was nowhere near expectations. India Inc was getting increasingly restive. The bureaucracy was getting more and more confused. Disappointment seemed to be writ large even among those who had warmed up to Brand Modi.  The brand was losing out to Nagpur and all the "I told you so-ers" were having a field day rubbing it into fence-sitters like me.

And then comes this Tendulkar moment in the Silicon Valley. A sudden flurry of quicksilver strokes and suddenly the innings look completely different. It is Modi on the front foot, confident and assertive, stylish and making stroke after stroke of breathtaking audacity. This is Brand Modi at its best.

The significance of the Silicon Valley foray goes far beyond Digital India, or Start Up Stand Up (or is it the other way around?), or Make in India or whatever. It goes far beyond what investments it brings in and the technology breakthroughs it may catalyse. It may do none of these and yet it can profoundly influence the future of India.

First, let us look closely at what happened. Here was a prime minister escaping from the ideologically toxic environment his own Parivar members had created back home not just to the US of A,  and not to New Jersey, or Jersey City or County Middlesex or Texas or Boston - but to California - the land of uninhibited freedom, of fiercely defended individual liberty, of rebellious, defiant and subversive thought, of flower children and beat poets and Dharma Bums, of liberating sexual mores - its air thick with all the "cultural pollutants" that his Parivar members have set out to cleanse. Yet, he chooses California to connect with the new world, to firmly establish that his vision for India is rooted in a celebration of democracy and free enterprise, of open doors and windows, of taking bold leaps of imagination, of risk taking, invention and innovation and  of knowledge led economic growth. The choice was critical to the reassertion of Brand Modi. It was also a subtle rebuff to many of his own Parivar.

And what does he do in California? He goes out of his way to charm and woo those who have made their mark not as hustling, carpet-bagging billionaires, but those who dominate the knowledge economy, those who have changed the way people live and learn and grow as human beings. He talks to them not of how ancient India had already prefigured what they thought of and invented and how Sanskrit was the most perfect language for computers, etc, but of democracy, of the knowledge revolution taking place, and of how India could leverage its "brain deposit" to make a technology a tool of empowerment for the most vulnerable sections of society - women, farmers, artisans and craftsmen.

He visits the headquarters of those known for their disruptive technologies, of those who have turned the world upside down and he celebrates their ability to subvert conventional thinking. He claims that it is social media which opened up a new world for him and which has transformed his own world view. He touches a chord with the young. He shows humility and humanness. He breaks down in an emotional moment and is not ashamed of doing so. He leaves an imprint with the most influential minds in the world today in a way in which no political leader (with the probable exception of Barack Obama) anywhere has. He has established an engagement with America which is far, far beyond joint statements and protocols and treaties.

Was it just theatrics? Is this persona that he is so assiduously constructing just a deceptive mask to hide his fundamentally fascist inclinations, a Machiavellian strategy to make us lower our guards so that he smuggles in the Hindu Rashtra from the backdoor, a part of the perfect "good cop, bad cop" routine that the Sangh Parivar stalwarts have perfected over the years?

The fact is it does not matter. Those who understand marketing will know that a "brand" has a life and logic of its own. The value of the brand, its equity, can never afford to be diluted and Modi knows that it is this brand equity which caught the imagination of young and aspirational India and it is this brand which will keep him in power. Brand Hindutva is the antithesis of Brand Modi. If he allows it to gain ground he loses. Why would anyone pursue politics in order to lose? Brand Modi is our best bet against the toxic agenda of the RSS. It needs our support.