What Modi read in 'school'

Is this government really so mysterious? Is there a key to breaking the code of this BJP's politics? The answer lies in understanding old texts on the BJP-RSS ideology

In this heavily headline- and intrigue-laden political environment, we run the risk of missing out on three vital pointers. Let’s go chronologically.

First, on the day of the consecration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, many key handles of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shared the “original” version of “Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram”, or what’s called the Ram Dhun, composed by the late maestro Vishnu Digambar Paluskar.

Then, the Prime Minister, in his latest Mann ki Baat, displayed the original first page and Preamble of the Constitution — that’s without the words “secular and socialist” that Indira Gandhi added in her six-year parliament in 1976.

And finally, Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, introduced the idea of a committee to look into the “challenge of population growth”. Each of these represents key elements of the BJP/RSS thinking and helps us understand the politics of the Modi government.

If you are curious why the Ram Dhun is an issue, do note that the original being shared now does not have the second line we have all sung through three generations and which we presumed was part of the original: “Ishwar, Allah tero naam, sab ko sanmati de Bhagwan” (Ishwar or Allah, you are the same God, please bless me with wisdom). This line was a Gandhian modification to give a Tulsidas-era composition a secular flavour.

On the day of the Pran Pratishtha, the BJP was reminding us which Ram Dhun, in its view, was secular, and which pseudo-secular. The tune also made an appearance at the Beating the Retreat ceremony later in the week (after 2016), and you’d wonder which words were being hummed by the BJP’s leading lights.

The context of the original Preamble is the BJP reminding you that the word “secular” is a latter-day insertion by an illegitimate Lok Sabha (its term extended in the Emergency in 1976), like that Ishwar-Allah line in Ram Dhun. Population growth is another old RSS/BJP concern, never mind that Indian birth rates are already at replacement levels and declining. In fact, we risk facing the challenge of declining and ageing population by the time our per capita incomes are at around $3,500, while the Chinese find a crippling threat at the $12,500 figure today. Never argue with ideological beliefs, however.

Now, we come to harder politics. Over its decade in power, the Modi government has acquired a reputation for keeping everything close to its chest, of always succeeding in surprising the closest watchers of Indian politics.

But is this government really so mysterious and inscrutable? Is there a key to breaking the code of this BJP’s politics, a window to its mind? The key lies in understanding its ideological commitment.

We have to be sobered by how cruel this Modi-Shah, and now Modi-Shah-Nadda approach has been. Particularly cruel to the reputation of the dwindling tribe of senior political journalists. This includes many claimants to inside knowledge, who were acknowledged to be, and also see themselves as being close to the BJP.

Nobody saw demonetisation coming, or the choice of Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh, the overnight changes in Jammu & Kashmir, the Citizenship Amendment Act, the ban on triple talaq, the crackdown on those seen as radical Left sympathisers — whom the BJP calls Urban Naxals, or the latest choices of the three Hindi states’ chief ministers.

We might have been less surprised if we had paid more attention to understanding the BJP/RSS ideology.

For Mr Modi’s critics, some of this comes from the abhorrence and contempt for that ideology. They are also seen as not particularly intellectually endowed. The fact is, they have been in power for a decade, and instead of fading away, they keep getting stronger. Therefore, there is enough appeal in that ideology for a significant number of voters.

If India’s rulers for a decade haven’t read the literature that shaped the older, generally Congress-friendly “secular” ideology, it isn’t as if they haven’t been reading anything. They’ve read their contemporary scriptures, from Hedgewar, Golwalkar and Savarkar to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.

The Modi government’s economic moves, for example, would be less of a surprise if you’d read two works by Deen Dayal Upadhyaya: Integral Humanism, and The Two Plans: Promise, Performance, Prospects. You would then have a clearer understanding of why the Modi government ensures the delivery of so many benefits, especially free food grains and cash, directly to the poorest.

If you are daunted by entire books, please Google Antyodaya. It is Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s idea of the state’s first responsibility being to the last man standing, ensuring nobody is left out. To that extent, it isn’t so different from Gandhi’s ideas: “I will give you a talisman…recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman]…”.

The other book, The Two Plans, is his critique of Nehruvian planned economics. More specifically, it talks about the first and the second five-year plans. It is just that when the book was published, nobody took the Jan Sangh (BJP’s original avatar) and the RSS so seriously. But you have got to acknowledge that the RSS minds plugged on, undaunted.

Some of the latest emphasis on “aatmanirbharta”, shepherding and patronising Indian entrepreneurs to become big and rich, protecting them from global competition, are all ideas you can see trickling down from here. Every Sarsanghchalak has spoken about these. The idea of one nation, one election comes, by the way, from Golwalkar (golwalkarguruji.org). It’s been resurrected by his followers in the 50th year of his death.

You can’t ignore these texts however much you dislike the BJP/RSS ideology. Unlike the texts of the Left, they do not lean on the great global names of the 19/20th century political history: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao. Unlike Nehru’s Discovery of India for the Congress, these aren’t so enjoyable. The RSS/BJP Gurus are Indian.

Very few voters are familiar with them, unlike the writings of Nehru and Gandhi in our school textbooks. But that doesn’t matter. The most important thing is, people are voting for those following these texts. The coming generations of Indians will also be reading them in their school textbooks.

The essential difference between the BJP and the Congress governments of the past is the commitment to ideology. The Congress leadership had much greater flexibility. Ideology guided its policies, but never governed them. For the BJP, it is different. Its commitment to ideology is almost fundamentalist.

The changes in Kashmir, Muslim personal laws, building of the Ram temple and consecration under the Prime Minister’s watch, and a whole host of economic changes, including import restraints and production-linked incentives, were all drawn from his ideology. If you delve deeper, even demonetisation. If we were reading their texts, we’d be less surprised.

That’s why, read again the three instances I listed earlier on. Going ahead in the Modi-BJP (read RSS) epoch, we should expect a concerted “cleaning up” of what’s seen as pseudo-secular contamination, from the Ram Dhun to the Preamble. And population growth (read Muslim population) will be a focus area.

The late Stephen Cohen was once asked why the CIA failed to pick up anything on the Vajpayee government’s Pokhran-II  tests. He famously said the problem with intelligence people is they never read anything that isn’t marked classified. Like the BJP election manifesto. If only they had read it, they would’ve known the tests will follow soon after they were sworn in. Apply the same test to our understanding of the Modi government and the BJP now. Start reading their texts. None is marked classified.

By special arrangement with ThePrint