Bharat Bhushan: If Modi takes power, it will be absolute // Mehru Jaffer: Time Magazine’s Timeless Modi
If Modi takes power, it will be absolute
by Bharat Bhushan
Despite taking back his resignation, the veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani has managed to rain on Narendra Modi’s parade. His resignation drama has flagged to the nation that Mr Modi’s elevation to the chairman of the BJP’s campaign committee – seen by his supporters as a half-way house to his being declared as the party’s prime ministerial candidate – was contested and not unanimous even within his own party. Irrespective of what happens to Mr Advani’s own political fortunes, this stigma of unacceptability – and, by implication, unsuitability -- for the top job in the country will stick to Mr Modi.
The moment Mr Modi was anointed the future face of the BJP, three things were clear. One, that the move came with the blessings of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Two, that nothing would be the same again in the RSS, and its political front, the BJP. And three, that the future of all leaders opposed to Mr Modi in the party would henceforth be uncertain.
It is the prospect of these cataclysmic changes that perhaps prompted Mr Advani’s belated attempts to put brakes on Mr Modi’s rise as the sole leader of the BJP. He objected to the interference of the RSS in the running of the BJP, saying in his letter that he was unable to reconcile holding party posts “with the current functioning of the party and the direction in which it is going”. He was pointing a finger at the way the triumvirate of Mr Modi, party president Rajnath Singh and the RSS functionary Suresh Soni were pushing through decisions in the party.
Mr Advani’s second charge of the value system of the party being eroded and leaders only promoting themselves was a direct hit at Mr Modi and his acolytes, though the cap fitted Mr Modi best as he left no stone unturned to project himself as the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the next general election. However, it might also fit Mr Singh who, perhaps, expects to be the collateral beneficiary of the BJP increasing its seats in the coming general election but Mr Modi being unacceptable as the leader of an alliance that could form the next government.
Mr Soni was perhaps working for a larger ideological cause. For, in the projection of Mr Modi, the RSS has found the missing piece of the fascist jigsaw puzzle that the RSS had been trying hard to put together – the cult of the Fuhrer in the persona of Mr Modi. Mr Advani seemed to have recognised this but it was too late for him to recoil from the monster he had himself helped fashion. Mr Modi’s hijacking of the BJP will have direct consequences for the relationship between the mother organisation – the RSS, and the BJP.
The RSS is shrinking and there is no infusion of new blood. A senior BJP leader is believed to have told the current RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, that he is like Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last emperor of India presiding over a crumbling empire. By contrast, the BJP has expanded all over the country because of its electoral successes. Its increased patronage-giving ability attracts hoards of direct recruits. Today it is the BJP that grants legitimacy to the RSS rather than the other way round. With Mr Modi effectively at the helm of the BJP, the importance of the RSS will decline further. He himself came as a nominee of the RSS and knows well how the system of controlling BJP units through organising secretaries nominated by the RSS works.
Once he has taken power, Mr Modi will not need the RSS and may in fact see it as an obstacle to his political authority. His predominantly corporate agenda is not shared by the RSS. Students of history might recall how Hitler had ordered the chief of the Storm troopers, Ernst Rohm, shot dead when the militia he led became a threat to his political power.
The BJP as a party that reflects many voices and many leaders within the Hindutva spectrum will cease to exist. Witness what happened to all those who opposed Modi in Gujarat - Shankersinh Vaghela is in the Congress, Keshubhai Patel, Suresh Mehta and Gordhan Zadafia are sitting at home,and Haren Pandya is dead. The national party will also split between those who are with Mr Modi and those opposed to him.
Mr Modi’s intolerance of Sanjay Joshi even as a member of the party’s large national executive or of Nitin Gadkari as party president are straws in the wind for anyone who does not show unflinching loyalty to him. Consider that no action was taken against the office-bearers of the youth wing of the BJP who demonstrated outside Mr Advani’s house for not supporting Mr Modi – the same faces who were shouting “Dada hosh mein aao (Come to your senses, grandad)” outside Mr Advani’s residence were distributing sweets at the BJP headquarters the next day! Under Mr Modi, the BJP will, in effect, become a party driven by a single leader.
Alas, the owl of Minerva, as the saying goes, only takes flight at dusk. Only in the twilight of his life has Mr Advani understood the historical truth about the RSS, the way it controls its front organisations, and the fascist leadership it promotes. But this is only because he himself could not be the leader that the RSS wanted. That Mr Advani finally backtracked after some conciliatory assurances by Mr Bhagwat shows that he has no ideological disagreements with the essential objectives of the RSS. He was only begging not to be publicly discarded as its chosen instrument.
Alas, the owl of Minerva, as the saying goes, only takes flight at dusk. Only in the twilight of his life has Mr Advani understood the historical truth about the RSS, the way it controls its front organisations, and the fascist leadership it promotes. But this is only because he himself could not be the leader that the RSS wanted. That Mr Advani finally backtracked after some conciliatory assurances by Mr Bhagwat shows that he has no ideological disagreements with the essential objectives of the RSS. He was only begging not to be publicly discarded as its chosen instrument.
Mr Advani could have gone down in history if he had had the courage to tell the RSS to stop its incessant propaganda against the minorities, to stop interfering in the BJP and worked towards severing the ideological links between the RSS and BJP. In the end, however, the old man failed to measure up to what the moment required of him.
Time Magazine’s Timeless Modi
by Mehru Jaffer
There is absolutely no way of knowing whether Muslim people annoy Narendra Modi as much as Jewish people had annoyed Austria-born Adolf Hitler who instigated and then lost the last world war. But both Modi and Hitler are mentioned here in the same breath because of a sense of deja vu over the euphoria in Gujarat today. Hitler came to power in the midst of an economic depression and large-scale unemployment. Hitler was a man in a hurry who took it upon himself to return to Germany its lost glory. Picking up the economy and remaining in power were his only priorities.
In the name of development, and at a time when the German nation was on its knees, Hitler axed everyone who came in his way of making money, including political opponents like Marxists, students, business people, gypsies, Jews and artistes. He chose his friends with much thought and care. He befriended industrialists, nationalists and conservative forces in the army who had money, and were ready to obey him without debate.
Hitler even did quite well for a while, proving that bad people don’t always do only bad things. The good things that Hitler did was to make Germans feel that they could make the country strong again. He instilled hope at a time of hopelessness. He employed people in building highways and streets. But he also got people he had imprisoned and confined to concentration camps to produce goods and supplies for the army without paying them for the work they did. He saved money by not paying workers he decided did not deserve to be paid. Within six years the number of unemployed did go down from many millions to thousands between 1933 and 1939.
The arms industry had generated massive employment opportunities and an economically desperate people grabbed any job available to them without question. As the economy improved, he made Germans feel that they could do it. Hitler’s quick-fix to make some Germans feel good and to continue in power began by instilling fear and awe amongst Germans of Jewish origin. Particularly wealthy bankers eventually did abandon much of what they owned in Europe and many of them fled, also to the US.
Those Jewish families who had no means or place to run away to, were made to perish in gas chambers, intentionally constructed for murdering them. To justify the mass murders, the superiority of a mythical Aryan race was propagated that represented Hitler and his coterie as the good guys who loved the nation and its people, while the others were made out to have no love for the fatherland. The confiscation of much of what the Jewish elite owned was justified in the name of socialist ideals like the distribution of personal wealth to benefit the nation.
Time magazine was so dazzled by him that Hitler was put on its cover as ‘man of the year’ in 1939. The same year Hitler invaded Poland, starting World War II that cost the world 50 million lives
At first all that Hitler seemed to have wanted to do was to confiscate privileges enjoyed by German Jews who were barred from government jobs and from owning land due to anti-Semitism practised in Europe for centuries. Most of the German citizens of Jewish origin were therefore bankers and earned a living in either small or big businesses. Others were in professions like teaching or medicine. Hitler’s anti-Semitism included a campaign against the Jewish people who were blamed for the previous world war and for hyperinflation in 1923. As Germans worked hard and the economy improved, their hatred towards fellow citizens of Jewish origin also increased. As unemployment slumped and Germans began to make money, admiration for Hitler magnified. Hitler had banned trade unions, hiked interest rates and controlled wages strictly to further boost the economy.
All these economic miracles overshadowed the cultural, political and social damage caused by Hitler and his Nuremberg laws against Jews. Time magazine was so dazzled by him that Adolf Hitler was put on its cover, as the man of the year in 1939. This is the same year that Hitler invaded Poland, starting World War II that cost the world 50 million lives and a loss of face once again for Germany.
No wonder there was deja vu when a few months ago the same magazine put Narendra Modi on its cover in March 2012! This is why I hope that Muslims, other minorities and secular Indians do not go through the same experience under Modi as the Jews did under Hitler not so long ago in history.
The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi: Inquiry Commission Report (1969)
'In our world their will be no emotions except fear, rage and triumph: the sex instinct will be eradicated we shall abolish the orgasm, there will be no loyalty except to the party.. but always there will be the intoxication of power always at every moment there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless…, If you want to imagine the future; imagine a boot stepping on a human face forever. The moral of this story is.. don’t let it happen.' Eric Arthur Blair, (George Orwell) was born in Motihari, Bihar, on 25 June 1903, and died in London on 21 January 1950
