Modi for PM?

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will not find it easy, despite the huge support from big industry in India, to ensconce himself as the prime minister of this burgeoning and, at times, confused secular democracy. The decision by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has demonstrated that despite strident support from sections within India, Modi is still considered a pariah. He still cannot travel to the US and the European Union member nations, except for the UK and Germany that have just lifted the ban on issuing him a visa.

Wharton’s decision has triggered a debate in the name of ‘democracy’ with Union Minister of State for Human Resource and Development Shashi Tharoor supporting Modi’s right to free speech. In his view, Wharton should have heard Modi as “once they had invited him, they had a duty to hear his point of view”. This echoes the sentiments of the chattering classes in the rich drawing rooms of India, who speak of democracy with great passion but choose to forget that the preamble of the Indian Constitution has linked this to the important concept of ‘secularism’, which is, in turn, linked intricately and irrevocably to Indian democracy. The one cannot exist without the other.

The letter sent by students, academics, lawyers, doctors and concerned citizens to Wharton, protesting against the invite sent to Modi to deliver a keynote address made some important observations that are shared by a large majority in India. One, that he had been refused a visa by the US State Department “on the ground that he, as chief minister, did nothing to prevent a series of orchestrated riots that targeted Muslims in Gujarat”; two, he has been “repeatedly faulted” since by the Supreme Court of India for “failing to prosecute those guilty of the crimes of 2002”; three, that economic development cannot be delinked from “the systematic oppression of minority populations, whether in India or elsewhere”; four, that efforts to “whitewash Modi’s grim record and to grant him international respectability” must be resisted. The same arguments had led to a big protest at Delhi University when Modi came to the campus to deliver a lecture at the Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC). The SRCC, however, chose to disregard the protest and continued with the event as part of larger efforts by certain sections to delink oppression from economic reforms.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is currently in the midst of active debate about its ‘star’ chief minister. There is a strong lobby led by stalwart LK Advani that is not particularly supportive of him leading the BJP into the 2014 general elections and is working to thwart the move. It is thus imperative for Modi to convince the party that he is capable of fetching the votes to silence the internal opposition, and this is precisely what he is doing with the help of industry and the media. He is being given a major makeover, a larger than life profile wherein he is projected as being a whiz kid with purpose and direction, who can transform not just Gujarat but India into a booming economy. In the process, no questions are being asked as statistics are reeled out on development, with little being reported about the continuing struggle within the state by India’s largest minority and secularists for justice and rights.

However, there can be no two views that if Modi manages to convince the country of his potential, the BJP will unite behind him as the prime ministerial candidate. The party, with the RSS and the front organisations, will then work towards creating a wave in favour of Modi with the intention of securing at least 200 parliamentary seats, if not more. Modi’s chances of becoming prime minister thus, are linked to the BJP emerging as the single largest party with at least 200 seats to ensure that the shortfall is made up by supporting regional parties. Lesser numbers will rake up ambitions within regional parties that might then not want to support the BJP, Modi or no Modi. For example if the AIADMK leader Jayalalitha, a professed Modi fan, gets sufficient numbers against a low performance of the BJP, she might prefer to stake claim herself, or help bring in another regional party to lead the government where she can then have a bigger say.

Efforts to reinvent Modi in the mould of an Atal Behari Vajpayee by sections of the BJP have not worked, with many seeing these as a joke. It is clear that Modi cannot hope to wear the Vajpayee mantle and will have to find his own slot in the BJP. Interestingly, the Congress Party has moved quickly to prevent the election scenario from becoming a Rahul Gandhi versus Modi face-off, with the former claiming that he is not interested in becoming the prime minister. The election will not be a cakewalk for Modi — that is certain — and he will have to do all that he can to prevent it from becoming uncomfortably bumpy.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 9^th, 2013.