[h=1]Is Narendra Modi genuinely BJP?[/h]SHIV VISVANATHAN: THE HINDU
A civilisation is greater than the sum of its individual values and an election is bigger, more poignant than the sum of its candidates. As one watches the drama of the current election, one realises that each candidate represents a Weltanschauung, a world view. Mr. Rahul Gandhi represents the Congress in decline, Mr. Kejriwal, a new politics of possibility dignified as the AAP, and Mr. Narendra Modi plays the BJP. Watching reflectively, one realises that while he is an effective candidate, he is a poor representation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). I do not see this either as a naive or a Machiavellian statement. Anyone interested in politics should confront this possibility.
Tectonic shifts within the BJP
Let us begin by going down memory lane, watching a Vajpayee as Prime Minister. He is at ease with himself. There is a style, an affability, a grace about him. He recites poetry with a flair. He does not need a Prasoon Joshi or a Piyush Pandey to do it. He can think civilisationally with ease. Then, consider his organisational double, Mr. Lal Krishna Advani. He is a Vajpayee in corsets, stiffer, more ascetic, and intensely serious about life. For him, the BJP is a vocation. He is a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) exemplar. Vajpayee who is more accessible, represents a less procrustean view of the BJP. Mr. Vajpayee makes the BJP a more inviting and inclusive proposition.
Whether it is Mr. Vajpayee or Mr. Advani, one senses an authenticity to them. They smell, evoke the BJP. The very differences in styles seem to add the realism of difference. Oddly, when I watch Mr. Modi, I miss this authenticity of text and context. Is Mr. Modi, an authentic BJP text as message and performance, and does the BJP as a party, as a community, see him as that? The answer is worryingly ambiguous. If one wants to be generous one can say that he represents not the exemplary values or the leadership qualities of the BJP, but a lowest common denominator of the BJP.
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Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Advani captured such a politics with grace and style. Mr. Narendra Modi sees the party as a necessary evil. No leader seems more hostile to his party than Mr. Modi. The party seems uneasy and even wary with him. Recent events indicate that the unease is a deep fault line.
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As politics, as style, as message, Mr. Modi presents an ersatz version of the BJP. There is little that is civilisational about him. Worse still, he creates an artificial Swadeshi, without any sense of Swaraj. Mr. Modi’s Swadeshi does not empower locality, it creates a politics of anxiety around security. He evokes paranoia insulting Mrs Sonia Gandhi as foreign and Italian which neither Mr. Advani nor Mr. Vajpayee would do. He is leader of a nukkad not of a nation. He behaves like a Bajrang Dal bully rather than a BJP leader ready for adjustments, coalitions or even a compromise necessary for an Indian idea of unity.
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There is a deeper inadequacy to his politics. As a country, we need leaders who can win more than the next election. Our Prime Minister is not a winnable horse, which corporate or media punters can be happy about. A leadership has to think fifty, hundred, at least five hundred years into the future. Mr. Modi offers little sense of the future, whether it is of craft, knowledge, agriculture or biotechnology. He has not a single significant line on an India of the future. Sadly, Mr. Modi might play a second rate mimic of Vivekananda and talk of the Parliament of religions at Chicago. But, Mr. Modi keeps thinking that his Parliament of Religions is Davos and a subsidiary at that. He might look China in the eye but has no alternative vision to China. The least a Veer Savarkar, a Har Dayal, a Lajpat Rai or a Vivekananda would have done is to provide an alternative to the Chinese idea of autocratic growth. Yet, Mr. Modi becomes through behaviour and style, as a second rate mimicry of China. Worse still, Mr. Modi seems to caricature the BJP. As the BJP declines as a party, as the older generation of visionaries disappears, a party in crisis produces a caricature of itself called Narendra Modi.
