India at 70: Why the Right isn't always right
On the 70th anniversary of Indian Independence, the Right and Left must rise above minorityism.
Treat Muslims as Indians first. Extricate Muslims from a false persecution complex. Muslims in India are safer than anywhere else in the world as I wrote here two years ago.
Former vice-president Hamid Ansari doesn't think so. In one interview (not surprisingly on Rajya Sabha TV), Ansari warned of "Muslim unease".
That's nonsense. Muslims in India are a self-confident, privileged lot with their own personal laws, Wakf board land, a full ministry to look after them and a liberal, secular media to guard against the slightest injustice done to them. The cult of minorityism does them a disservice.
The Left has meanwhile been a resounding failure in India and worldwide. But the Right in India should not repeat the same mistakes the Indian Left has historically made: appeasing Hindus just as the Left appeased Muslims.
Appease none. Empower all. It's time the Right put those words into action.
Stop segregating
India is never going to be a "Hindu Pakistan" as some warn darkly. In order to be truly secular, we need to stop segregating Muslims and treating them as mere minorities. Integrate them and don't fret over how many or how few Muslims there are in the Union Cabinet (Naqvi, Akbar, etc). The more we segregate minorities, the more we make them feel cut off from the mainstream.
The paranoia about majoritarianism is ill-founded. India is a Hindu-majority country despite which Muslims have occupied virtually every constitutional post: president, vice-president, speaker, governor.
Except one: prime minister.
Now whose fault might that be? The Congress was in office for 54 years: 1947-77, 1980-89, 1991-96 and 2004-14. It reserved largely ceremonial posts (president, vice-president and governor) for Muslims and the really important post of prime minister for the Nehru-Gandhis (Jawaharlal, Indira and Rajiv) and their co-opted loyalists (Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh).
Rao turned mildly rogue only when safely out of power and was duly punished with ostracism by the Gandhis for his temerity.
The Right, marginalised for decades, finally has its day in the sun. There have been false dawns before: the right-wing Swatantra Party, made up of business-minded and impeccably liberal leaders like Minoo Masani, flashed briefly into prominence in the 1960s.
Thirty years later, Atal Bihari Vajpayee endowed the Right with a patina of Nehruvian respectability. He spoke warmly of Pakistan, made Abdul Kalam president and invoked insaniyat in Kashmir.
That was the soft Right. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi we now have the hard Right.
Modi has a brutally single-minded vision for India: no Indian should go to sleep hungry; there must be equality of opportunity; technology will enable India to become a middle-income country in a decade.
These of course aren't right-wing objectives. They are universal objectives. The problem is the left-wing, led by the Congress, has for over half-a-century failed to achieve any of these objectives.
Neither so far has the Right.
So where has the Right gone wrong?
First, it is far too obsessed with petty issues. The beef and cattle slaughter ban (the latter has been challenged in the Supreme Court) are distractions. They have nothing to do with governance. You can be vegetarian but must defend every Indian's lawful right to eat what he or she wants.
The Maharashtra government's latest appeal in the Supreme Court to overturn a Bombay High Court stay on police entering peoples' homes to check if they have illegally stored beef is mindlessly regressive and a violation of privacy.
The Supreme Court is certain to uphold the Bombay High Court's stay, making the Devendra Fadnavis government look both foolish and illiberal.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's directive to madrassas to record on video whether they played Vande Mataram on Independence Day is equally absurd. Vande Mataram is a magnificent ode to India and every Indian should sing it. But those who don't want to - be they Muslim, Hindu or Martian - should be defended on the principle that lawful individual choice supersedes state diktat.
Instead of wasting the government's time on such directives meant to polarise votes, Yogi Adityanath should focus on governance. The tragic deaths of 63 children in his constituency Gorakhpur and the appalling state of hospitals in Uttar Pradesh should occupy his attention. Leave madrassas, however regressive, to their devices.
Modi's single-mindedness has two separate compartments: development and elections. His incremental economic reforms fall into the first silo. Tolerating the polarising diktats of Adityanath and Fadnavis fall into the second.
For Modi winning a second term is crucial. He found a hollowed-out economy when he took office in 2014. The bureaucratic detritus, the old power brokers in Delhi, the media's entrenched vested interests - all had to be overcome.
Three years down the line, only half the job is done. He needs two more years to remove the remaining debris. The next five years, 2019-2024, could then see real development.
But to win in 2019, Modi needs votes. That is why to him the means justify the end.
It is not an ideal situation. Modi could do better if he had more talent among his 280 Lok Sabha and 58 Rajya Sabha MPs. Alas, he doesn't.