The long read: Modi is a man with a plan, but which one is it?

Given a mandate to reform India’s economy, Narendra Modi’s critics contend he has actually embarked upon a faith-based transformation of India that bullies millions of non-Hindus.

BJP supporters gather during an election rally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi amid Bihar Assembly Elections, at Hazipur on October 25, 2015 in Patna, India. Arvind Yadav / Hindustan Times via Getty Images
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The day Narendra Modi became prime minister I received an email from a friend lamenting the “demise” of liberal India with a sketch of a gravestone saying: ”RIP Liberal India (1947-2014)”. I thought he was overreacting and told him to calm down.

One year on, I wonder whether he had a point. The country is in the midst of an unprecedented surge in sectarian tension as far-right Hindu nationalist groups, emboldened by Modi’s victory, have taken centre-stage, terrorising religious minorities and silencing dissent.

Dadri is a small town in Uttar Pradesh, barely 50 kilometres east of New Delhi. And though Hindus are in a majority, they have lived in harmony with the Muslim community. But last month that changed: many Muslims have since fled the town and those who have remained live in fear, with one telling catchnews.com: “I’m prepared to become a Hindu. But please don’t hurt my wife and children. Whatever these people want, I’m prepared to do.”

The incident that wrecked the generations-old bonhomie in Dadri happened on September 28 when Mohammed Akhlaq, a Muslim man, was lynched by a Hindu mob on the basis of rumours – later proved to be baseless – that his family had killed a cow and eaten it during Eid Al Adha. Hindus regard cows as sacred and cow slaughter is banned in many states. The mob was allegedly led by supporters of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Akhlaq’s killing, with echoes of the burning alive of a Muslim legislator in Gujarat in 2002 when Modi was its state chief minister, has been followed by: the murders of two Muslims in Udhampur, Kashmir, again on unproven accusations of cow slaughter; the killings of three liberal Hindu writers and activists critical of aspects of Hinduism, including MM Kalburgi, a renowned rationalist thinker from Karnataka; the assault of Sudheendra Kulkarni, a former BJP leader and a critic of Modi, who had black ink thrown on his face and was called “antinational” for hosting the launch of former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri’s book in Mumbai.

Welcome to the India of 2015.

It has been 18 months after Modi and his party swept to power with a massive mandate for an aggressively touted “development” agenda. Modi promised to build a “new” India for a new century. But, as these incidents show – and they are only a few of the more shocking ones – this emerging “new” face the country doesn’t look very pretty, with flag-waving Hindu zealots affiliated to the BJP and its far-right parent organisation the RSS (Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh) going around beating up anyone who doesn’t agree with them.

Modi, who himself is a self-avowedly loyal RSS member and owes his victory to it, has chosen to remain silent, claiming that the troublemakers are “fringe” elements over whom he has no control. But that’s not entirely true. Some of his own ministers – notably the culture minister, Mahesh Sharma, as well as senior BJP members of parliament and some state chief ministers – have been embroiled in unsavoury controversies. One BJP chief minister has said that Muslims can live in India, provided that they do not eat beef.

India has had BJP-led governments before, but what is new this time is that the RSS appears to be driving the agenda. Its activists openly boast that it is “our government”, and in what is regarded as a breach of constitutional conventions, five senior Cabinet ministers, including foreign minister Sushma Swraj, recently met RSS leaders to debrief them on government affairs and take suggestions to “improve” its functioning.

This influence has given an enormous boost to the Hindu right. And it has been quick to seize the moment to push its divisive ideas that include a campaign to forcibly “reconvert” India’s Muslims and Christians to Hinduism, arguing that, originally, they were all Hindus. The government, on its part, has chipped in with controversial moves to rewrite the secular school curriculum by introducing Hindu religious texts to reflect better the country’s “Hindu ethos”, according to the education minister, Smriti Irani.

Pro-RSS candidates have also been appointed to head prestigious academic and arts institutions such as the Indian Council of Historical Research and the Film and Television Institute of India. History books are being “reviewed” to highlight the glories of ancient Hindu India.

India, under Modi, has become culturally and religiously more polarised , and attempts to impose a Hindu majoritarian view on a historically diverse and pluralistic society have prompted concern – even among Modi’s supporters – over the direction the country is headed. Tavleen Singh, a prominent media commentator and Modi supporter, told a TV channel that she felt “ashamed” at what was happening. More than 40 writers, including the novelist Nayantara Sahgal, have returned their government awards to highlight the current climate of intolerance.

Amid all this, Modi’s vote-winning development agenda has been pushed on to the back burner. There is no sign that the root-and-branch economic reforms that he promised are coming, and the corporate sector, which heavily bankrolled his election campaign, is becoming vocal in its complaints.

Similarly, his pledge to offer a new deal to the poor, especially the rural poor, appears to have been forgotten: Modi’s government has actually cut down existing allocations for several support schemes introduced by the previous government. Liberals allege that his development agenda was a ploy to win votes, the government’s real agenda is reform according to the RSS philosophy of Hindu supremacy.

What we are really witnessing is a battle for India’s soul – between liberals committed to the idea of a secular, pluralistic and tolerant India inspired by its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and those who believe that such ideas have had their day. They blame such liberalism for all that has gone wrong with the country in the past 65 years; and led to “pampering” of religious minorities especially Muslims at the cost of Hindus.

Admittedly, India today, with an open-market economy and a vastly expanded, aspirational and globally focused middle class, is not the India of 1950s with its Soviet-style economy struggling to find a place in a world dominated by two superpowers. Perhaps the country does need a new vision to take it forward.

But the problem remains: while claiming to offer an alternative idea for India, Modi and his intellectual mentors seem to have no clue as to what their vision of a “new” India actually is. We all know what Modi doesn’t stand for, but nobody quite knows what he does.

As a slogan, “new India” may have a nice ring, but slogans are no substitute for a clear road map and a vision to translate it into action. There is no evidence that Modi has either. The result is that India faces an uncertain future, precariously poised at a point where, having voted for a decisive break with the past, it still doesn’t quite know where it is going.

Curiously enough – and it is the crucial bit of the story – the profound significance of last year’s general election verdict that brought Modi to power has still not sunk in, especially in liberal quarters. where it is regarded as simply another blip in the electoral cycle.

A blip, it is not. What the Modi victory represents is a decisive lurch to the right – not just politically but culturally. As Zoya Hasan, a leading Indian social scientist, points out in Making Sense of Modi's India, the "BJP's coming to power is not just one party replacing the other but an indication of a clear shift in the ideological discourse of Indian politics".

For the first time, the idea of majoritarianism has acquired political legitimacy on the back of a systematic and misleading campaign to portray it as an expression of the will of the majority of Indian people.

There is constant talk of “Hindu pride” backed by attempts to project India as a “Hindu power” in the world. Minorities are seen as irritants, and advocates of minority rights are accused of encouraging “minority-ism”.

Contrary to the belief in complacent liberal circles, the Modi “phenomenon” is not a passing phase. From all accounts, it is here to stay. Even if Modi loses the next election, India will never be the same again.

Hasan Suroor is a London-based writer and commentator. Making Sense of Modi’s India, edited by him, is published this month.