Manu Joseph - Old Fantasies Are Distorted in Indian Elections

Mr. Modi, who wants to be India’s prime minister, is not a man who can survive a question session he cannot control.

For decades, India’s business elite dreamed of an alpha-male dictator who would also be a university graduate and generally a wonderful person, while the intellectual elite waited for the revolution that would set everything right. The poor ensured that India remained a democracy by turning out to vote every time they were asked to. In tribute, the politicians ensured that they remained poor.

As India heads toward general elections in April and May, its 814,591,184 registered voters are being influenced by mutated versions of India’s old fantasies. At the heart of the festive campaigns is a man who admirers and foes alike assert is a mass leader with dictatorial qualities; his alarmed opponents, headed by the governing party, the Indian National Congress; and an underrated revolutionary who wants to destroy all of the above and start afresh.

What the elections are largely about this time is the rise of the fierce Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi — whose charm in no small measure derives from the sense of danger he exudes from having been accused of complicity in the 2002 riots in Gujarat State that resulted in the deaths of more than a thousand people, mostly Muslims — and the political responses to his ascent.

The notion that Mr. Modi, who belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been the principal opposition in Parliament for 10 years, is the answer to India’s woes has been propagated by the business community, which owns Indian journalism, and the urban middle class, which views the Indian National Congress as corrupt, inefficient and a reckless benefactor of the poor. The noise on social media, which is largely in favor of Mr. Modi, contains the low-stakes patriotism of Indian residents of the United States who do not have to live through the consequences of their long-distance affair with nationalism. They tend to be liberal Democrats in the United States, but political conservatives in India.

The man who has done the greatest damage to Mr. Modi is Arvind Kejriwal, who was the core of a street movement against the corrupt political class before he converted his anarchic protests into an Occupy the Delhi Assembly movement and ran for office. He ended up as Delhi’s chief minister. Mr. Kejriwal has accused Mr. Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat in 2002 and still today, of being a danger to India’s Muslims and a vassal of India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani.

Mr. Modi has not responded. On Sunday, a day before he was to appear before a live television audience, he canceled the event. He was to face questions not only from an interviewer but also from the audience. A person who was aware of the details and did not want to be identified said that Mr. Modi’s cancellation followed demands from his party to control the nature of the questions and the broadcast. Mr. Modi, who wants to be India’s prime minister, is not a man who can survive a question session he cannot control.

His opponents, headed by the Congress party, have tried to counter him by forming a tired fellowship of what they call “secularism,” which in theory is about the co-existence of various faiths but in practice is short-term pandering to India’s nearly 180 million Muslims.

It was in response to the perceived rise of Mr. Modi that an unusual meeting was organized by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Two men many Indians would never believe could share a stage did exactly that, at a public seminar on Monday. These were ordinary men, but they were the subjects of two extraordinary photographs that became emblems of the 2002 Gujarat riots. One was Qutubuddin Ansari, a Muslim tailor who was photographed during the riots begging security personnel to save him. The other was Ashok Mochi, one of the Hindu rioters, who was photographed brandishing an iron rod as he set homes on fire.

Mr. Mochi, who was imprisoned for a few days on minor charges, asked Mr. Ansari to forgive him and said Mr. Modi’s claims of economic progress in Gujarat under his administration were an exaggeration. “I still live on a footpath,” Mr. Mochi said.

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