Are Modi And The BJP Willing To Fight The Good Fight? 

By Indian Reagan

The BJP spent the better past of last year trying to move to the centre. As you can imagine, this was a complete, total unmitigated disaster. This move to the centre was not the cause of assembly defeats like Bihar and Delhi — after all such elections are rarely determined by ideological positioning. But more visible in an aimless directionless government strong on implementation but lacking in the right ideas. The Modi Government looks more like UPA-3 than BJP-1 [1].

Why did the government try to move to the centre? After a string of assembly victories, the BJP started looking invincible. With the Congress in disarray (it still is to this day) and no united front to counter them, the BJP started to think longer term —positioning itself as a big tent party to replace the Congress. This was aided by the fact that the Lutyens media appears to be delightfully mercenary. The press gang - you would assume, has a price. With a large number of foreign visits planned and investors to woo, a little peace at home would be nice. So for every “controversy” from attacks on Churches to intolerance, the BJP would seem to be accommodating, PM would say something nice. The government would release ads. BJP would do Congress-like things announcing a big “package” for Bihar effectively trying to buy the Bihar elections. NREGA would be praised. Statesman-itis seemed to engulf Modi ending with the very un-56” gesture of visiting Pakistan. Lutyens it seems, had its ultimate revenge, it had made Modi one of its own.

This move to the centre failed for many reasons, but the primary one being that the media did not bite. For the press gang in no need of money. Thanks to VC funded startups and their insane ad budgets, Times of India made its largest profits in company history last year. The others were definitely not doing too badly. Plus when Kejriwal won the Dilli elections, the press got their own state government with a state budget to use on themselves. Dilli has an outsized ad budget for a city government [2]. Taking cues from their American cousins, a new breed of journalists have gone even deeper into the radical left. Having already invested against Modi and in no desperation, the media doubled down and went for the jugular against Modi climaxing in a malicious intolerance campaign created out of thin air. Can you be perceived as a centrist, when the media seems to be spending every waking hour of every day screaming “jackboot fascism” ?

The centrism campaign has limited effects on the electoral prospects of Modi but had one unintended big casualty — its volunteer corps.

The BJP has an army of unpaid, unrecruited, undirected social media activists who joined the fight for a candidate they believed was truly path breaking. Modi was a man who took all the barbs directed at him but refused to compromise or take the easy way out. A man you can back.

But something is amiss when revolutionary (for India) slogans like “Minimum government” gives way to the more anodyne “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”. How is that slogan translated any different from the “Inclusive Development” mantra of Manmohan? More excruciating is this practice of Modi’s ministers giving exclusives to NDTV. An agitation against the channel and its diva anchor defined the coming of age of Internet Hindus. To Modi’s followers, nothing represents the corrupt left establishment quite like Barkha Dutt and here are Modi’s biggest ministers falling in line to acquiesce to her and her channel.

Whether one joined Modi as a cultural Hindu, a nationalist, or for economic reasons, a centrist Modi government is bound to disappoint. Somebody trying to be everything to everyone is bound to be nothing to no one. The rhetorical swagger which defines Modi loses its edge when it is wrapped in insipid centrism. An insipid centrist is not the path breaking mass leader one backed.

The remaining true believers — have constantly reminded me and other disenchanted followers that things are not as bad as we think they are. After all Gadkari, Suresh Prabhu, Piyush Goyal, Sushma Swaraj, Manohar Parrikar have done stupendous work. Legislative action has only been delayed because of Congress obstructionism. The Supreme Court will act against Modi Government, whenever it can, just because it can and to show Modi his place. In this line of thinking, what defines the ennui of Modi’s supporters seems to be a let down by the BJPs media unit. They should have done a better job crafting and perpetuating a narrative of all the wonderful achievements of Modi.

But that is missing the larger point. The Modi army is a volunteer army of people who joined him because they were inspired by him. The BJP media unit has never been a very good propaganda machine. What has worked so effectively for them is a bunch of people taking time off to help the Modi cause. The social media army of the BJP like the cadres of the RSS are volunteers. They need to be inspired.

However last week something changed — and how.

The JNU controversy was without question a glimpse into an alternate government. A government not swayed by centrism to paralyze itself. A BJP government in-sync with its volunteer corps. A government not afraid to do what is right. A government which does not listen to screaming Bolshevik revolutionaries or their media acolytes. Arresting JNU students was always going to have a backlash, even though the radicalism of the institution is well known and not entirely innocuous. The government took a hard line. The media screamed bloody murder. The energized volunteer corps fought back and had a small victory when both Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi had to back the government line that anti-nationalism is not welcome.

Lutyens groupthink is a wonderfully deceptive thing. If you read enough oped’s, it would have convinced you that Modi was bound to lose elections. It convinced an AEI scholar — Sadanand Dhume — a rightist free market enthusiast that Modi would be bad for India. It convinced itself that raising a national flag in a government building on government land in a government university is a quaint, silly, stupid thing. It makes you think that standing up for the national anthem should be voluntary. That Vande Matram and Bharat Mata ki Jai are communal slogans which should get you into contempt of court.

So it’s no surprise that the media and the pundit class seem to think that the BJP has shot itself with its actions on JNU. I beg to disagree. The actions in JNU represent a rare political victory for the Modi government despite all odds. The misdirection from the left has never stopped, But every attempt at propaganda is countered — and how! The fight is still on, But it is a fight that can be won. Most importantly it is a fight that will be fought and won by a bunch of people who may not even be members of the BJP.

After BJP lost 2004, a line of thinking went that the Congress is seen as a party of peace, but the BJP is seen as a party of conflict. The classes hate conflict. This is a dangerous line of thinking for a Modi government. For a leader like Modi, he has to embrace conflict.

Sometime this year and the next, Modi will have more legislative latitude than he has now. He will be able to pass the laws he wants to pass. Will he take the easy way out or will he push to pass the right laws? Is he willing to take the risks?

A lot of Modi’s missteps were caused due to a false sense of inevitability and invincibility. Truth is the next election is really really hard. Playing it safe does not have a higher probability of success. Modi needs to fight. And he needs to fight from the right. And he needs all the help he can get.

The article was first published here.

References

[1] With 270+ seats its not NDA-2 — Its BJP-1

[2] Its not able to pay salaries of one set of official employees, while paying the salaries of another set of employees — the journalists.