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| Politics, made in India | | | Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | 2/17/2015 10:33:12 PM |
| Modi and Kejriwal endear themselves to voters by
playing on the sentiments that have provided emo
tional sustenance. They give the people what they want, not what is best for them.
Arvind Kejriwal, like Narendra Modi, represents the restoration of Indian politics to India's grassroots. Their media equivalent can be traced to the rise of the popular press in late 19th century Britain when for the first time it became fashionable to give people not what was best for them but what they wanted.
Indian politics has travelled even further since the highly Anglicised Bengali barrister, W.C. Bonnerjee, presided over the Indian National Congress in 1885. It was really a former ICS officer, Allan Octavian Hume, who founded the organisation, but he felt an Indian should preside over the inaugural session which, like meetings for several years, ended with singing "God Save the Queen". Despite its European-born president, today's Congress is a very much more desi party.
Whatever his private beliefs, even Rahul Gandhi would not dream of saying like his great-grandfather that "any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me". Neither would he denounce, like Jawaharlal Nehru, "the spectacle of organised religion" because it is identified with "blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests."
Nehru aspired to reinvent the Indian nation in his own rational, secular image. With their thorough grasp of India's social dynamics, Mr Modi and Mr Kejriwal endear themselves to voters by playing on the sentiments that have provided emotional sustenance through the ages. They give the people what they want, not necessarily what is best for them.
Caste and creed provide the obvious illustrations. One can't imagine Nehru standing up to announce he was a brahmin. Indira Gandhi's modernist sensitivities would also have prevented her from doing so even if, as an astute tactician, she had no scruples about wooing brahmin (or any other sectarian) votes.
But Mr Kejriwal declared with proud candour at a traders rally in Nehru Place, "Mein baniya hun aur, dhanda samajhta hoon!" He promised to end harassment raids in the name of value added tax and, true to his word, the Aam Aadmi Party's 70-point programme promised not only to reduce VAT but to drastically simplify the collection procedure. This exploitation of identity politics was explicable in terms of a survey that showed baniyas account for about six per cent of Delhi voters.
The resounding "Bharat Mata ki Jai!" with which Mr Kejriwal ends his speeches is no mere formality either. He knows how to pull at heartstrings. Mr Modi no longer has a monopoly over the holy Ganga: Mr Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, Delhi's new deputy chief minister, have also publicly worshipped on its banks. If Mr Modi offered puja and sandalwood at Kathmandu's Pashupatinath temple, Mr Kejriwal celebrated Durga Puja in Delhi's Karol Bagh. Saffron and sadhus are not the BJP's exclusive prerogative any more. Mr Kejriwal can match Mr Modi's Sakshi Maharaj with his very own Cheena Maharaj. "Cheena Ji Maharaj is like our guru," he announced recently. "With his aashirvad, we can take this organisation forward."
The Maharaj has the added advantage of being a Dalit. He belongs to the Valmiki (Bhangi) community, which traditionally supplies the capital's sweepers. Mr Kejriwal's courtship of Valmikis yielded dividend last year when the AAP won nine of Delhi's 12 reserved seats. He repaid the debt by including two Valmikis - including a woman in his seven-member ministry. He called it history in the making. And, indeed, it was. This time the AAP won all 12 reserved seats, justifying Mr Kejriwal's boast that only his organisation gives respect to the lowest.
Cheena Maharaj is an invaluable ally. He is priest of the temple for Valmikis Birla built a century ago in Mandir Marg. Apparently, the temple once refused to allow Mayawati to enter. But one can see pictures on the Internet of Cheena Maharaj performing puja there for Mr Kejriwal sitting cross-legged beside him.
If the maharaj is to be believed, he also selected the broom as the AAP's election symbol out of three designs Mr Kejriwal produced.
He thought it would be an effective rallying symbol for the Valmiki community.
The AAP broom also neatly upstaged the Prime Minister's Swachh Bharat Abhiyan with celebrities wielding what might well be designer brooms. Mr Modi's new galabandh suit is relevant in this context. If it cost Rs `10 lakh, that may be because the cloth had to be specially woven and he may have ordered bales of the stuff for future use. People might think such an ostentatious garment set Mr Modi apart from the masses. But did it? It's more likely it matched the aspirations of the multitude.
No child of patrician parents born in Allahabad's Anand Bhavan would dream of being seen dead in such self-advertising attire. But all the millions who believe Motilal Nehru (or C.R. Das) sent his shirts to Paris to be laundered do not themselves belong to Anand Bhavan's culture.
They don't repeat the absurd tale to condemn extravagance but with admiration and envy of fulfilled ambition. Listening to Mr Modi's speech in Hindi from Hyderabad House, the multitude would also have gloated on how kindly the head of the world's only superpower treats India's leader, allowing him to use his first name and even indulge in the familiarity of jokes and banter.
Do these two instances of populist identification set a national trend? Mr Modi's style is his own, and not the BJP's. Another BJP politician may not succeed in copying it.
The AAP, which fielded 400 candidates last year and won four parliamentary seats from Punjab, seems to have abandoned national ambitions for the moment. But even if two swallows do not a summer make, Mr Modi and Mr Kejriwal have nudged the style and substance of Indian politics a little further from the Westminster prototype along the road to indigenisation.
The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author
( [email protected]) |
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