Crazy times and the lessons for Pakistan

Modi is a man who shouted his radical views from pulpits, in saffron rallies, in media — everywhere

A butterfly never really grows back into a slug. The laws of nature remain stubbornly, and in the butterfly’s case, mercifully constant. But man-made systems and laws, unlike nature’s laws, are less compliant. Take democracy, a system which has doubtlessly yielded progress and human development across the preceding decades, yet manages frequently to backslide into absurdity.

Just pay attention to the great democracies of the world today. Take America, where Donald Trump leads the GOP polls for presidential nomination, that too by quite some margin. Trump’s popularity torments the cerebrum: just how in the land of Jeffersons and Madisons — a land whose Constitution glows with such profundities as “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” — could a ham-coloured boor with opinions more repellent than his hair, gain popular support of any kind. The truth is that outside all its talk of liberalism, feminism, transgender equality and so on, there is within America, a not-so-fringe cross-section of people who yearn for the America of yesterday; romantics desperately seeking lost tradition and fuzzy communion buried under the bling and shimmer of American modernity. And Trump, with all his talk of erecting walls to keep ‘wetbacks’ out and his Starbucks boycotting antics (as punishment for erasing the Christmas logo), offers them just that. This is not a man who treads gently on nuance, or swims in specificities on matters important; he is, instead, the hooting and howling type, whose mouth-noises are designed to attract fellow knuckle-draggers into an ugly fellowship of collective hate. Even in today’s liberal America there is, quite disturbingly, an open and arguably growing market for Trump’s demagoguery.

And then there is India where another man, in this case already elected, beats his chest in Hindutva rage. Narendra Modi was a red-flag from the minute he took office. His supporters disagree. They point to his impressive bona fides as an accomplished administrator. It is true that as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi turned things around for the better: in his time industry flourished, dams were constructed, solar power plants were established, infrastructure was developed, basic services were improved, tourism accelerated, and agricultural yield expanded — impressive feats all of them. But Hitler was not a bad administrator either. It so happens that when it comes to leadership, worldview matters immensely. An administrative and strategic genius, who believes in the superiority of German blood, and by extension the genocide of the ‘other’, is probably not the best man to lead a nation. Likewise, a Hindutva fancier could transform a village into a first world haven, but if he reserves its access for a select band of his co-ideologists at the exclusion of others, he is not fit to lead. This is why Modi is so dangerous and his overwhelming mandate in the Lok Sabha so worrying. You see, Modi didn’t just spring out from obscurity, posing a calm visage while concealing a psychopath underneath. This is a man who shouted his radical views from pulpits, in saffron rallies, in media — everywhere. With him no reading between the lines was required; the lines were headlines — dripping with his xenophobic passions of Hindu nationalism. It was all there for everyone to see, the man who presided over a Muslim massacre as chief minister of Gujarat in 2002 breathed fire and bigotry. To his credit though, when asked about the Gujarat massacre, Modi admitted regret, the kind he would feel for a “puppy being run over by a car”. And yet this is the man India voted into power. So in today’s India when a random farmer is mob-lynched on the suspicion of eating beef, an expression of surprise should be the last of our reactions. Disgust maybe, but not surprise.

For Indians there is redemption in push-back, which there has been. The liberals have come out in strong opposition to Modi’s divisive politics. Actors, artistes, writers, a whole spectrum of civil society has been vocal in its condemnation. With the BJP losing the Bihar elections, the message seems loud and clear: secular, pluralistic India rejects Modi-ism.

For Pakistanis, the lessons in this are many. One, there is power in ballot. Instead of crying ‘corruption’ and ‘nepotism’ and chanting ‘go-Nawaz-go’ slogans with cyclical insanity, let’s use the power of electoral mandate to vote the right people into power, or rid ourselves of the wrong ones. We’re not as helpless as we think. Two, let each individual understand where they stand along the political spectrum before casting their vote. Today, as before, personalities, not policies, determine voter’s choice in Pakistan. This affords politicians all the wiggle-room to go back and forth on their policy agendas, or to even have none to begin with, while we’re busy discussing their divorces or other trivia. Let’s hold these people to higher standards, but this begins with informing our own selves first. Three, be suspicious of ideologues. Ideology-based politics and policies have bruised us bloody. Just as we rightfully condemn the rise of exclusionary politics in India, let’s practice the same principle at home. Our treatment of minorities — Hindus, Ahmadis, Christians, etc. — is born of a belief in ideological superiority. Now is the time — indeed the only time we have left — for us to revisit some of our founding myths. Finally, let’s understand the critical distinction between administration and leadership. Leadership is not just getting things done; it is getting the morally right things done. This requires no deep analysis of Kant’s moral philosophy. The world arrived at a global consensus decades ago with the universal declaration of human rights: that we are all equal under law. And this is precisely why ideas and beliefs of those in power matter. So next time your local mayor/district Nazim, governor, or even prime minister explains the quaking of the Earth by invoking Baal or Thor or some deity’s wrath, let that sufficiently alarm you and prod you into action because entire generations could suffer from one man’s delusions. After all, Modi once described the Hindu deity Ganesha’s peculiar elephantine anatomy as the handiwork of primordial plastic surgeons. Surely, in this there were signs for the discerning.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 27^th,  2015.

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