The past is another country, said L.P. Hartley and how true that sounds when one looks over the newspapers of just a year ago. In December 2013, Narendra Modi was just one more politician in the country, more in the news for getting a “clean chit” in the Gulberg case than as a future Prime Minister. Rahul Gandhi had already been given up as a claimant. The hero of the moment was Arvind Kejriwal, who had just won a resounding victory in the Delhi elections earlier in the month and was now being touted as the most important player in Indian politics. Man of the Year, said one paper, Year of the Man, said another, getting creative. Learned pundits opined that he could play a decisive role in the general elections; one stuck his neck out and painted a scenario where he could even become the Prime Minister. A lot of speculation — and fantasising — was going on.
But all agreed on one thing. India was on the cusp of monumental change and the current regime was on its way out. The Congress was seen as a no-hoper and barely got written about. There was a sense of big things to come in the New Year, no matter which party or dispensation came to power. After 10 years, India was heading for change.
As it turned out, 2014 brought about convulsive changes, throwing out all the learned commentary and predictions of the pundits and pollsters and the consensus now was that achhe din had come. Mr Modi and his team had done a stupendous job of not just scoring a big win but selling a dream to millions of Indians from all social and economic strata that their lives were about to change for the better and that the Indian economy would now get turbo charged, zooming towards a glorious future. With an armoury of slogans and acronyms at his disposal and a massive war chest which blitzed the media right from the moment the new year began,
Mr Modi dazzled the voters, leaving all other contenders far behind — they sounded tired and had no answers for his promise of growth, development and jobs, all things that we felt had vanished from the national discourse. As this year ends, looking back, where have we reached? Mr Kejriwal, whose party won barely a handful of seats, is struggling to get back into contention in yet another Delhi election, after he so casually threw away his mandate by resigning for an innocuous administrative reason; Mr Gandhi and his party are even less in the media than they used to be; the newspapers and television channels are dominated by Mr Modi and instead of economic jargon, we are only hearing phrases like “ghar wapsi”, “re-conversion”, “love jihad”, “Nathuram Godse”, “Haraamzade” and “Hindutva”. These were words that were non-existent in our consciousness till May 26, 2014 — now they are everywhere.
Outfits and leaders one had never known of have crawled out from the woodwork, as if they were preparing for just this moment to spread their message of bigotry and hate. It began with the gruesome public killing of a Muslim techie in Pune on June 2, barely a week after the new government was sworn in and has picked up momentum since then. From one corner comes a voice declaring that India is a Hindu nation, from another a threat to install Nathuram Godse statues all over the country. Poor Muslims are goaded into “converting” themselves to Hinduism. A minister suggests that the Bhagavad Gita be made the “national scripture”.
Much has been made of the fact that Mr Modi, who had not spoken of these matters during his campaign or even after he took office as Prime Minister, has kept silent and not rebuked these purveyors of a Hindutva agenda. But, assuming he wants to, will that make any difference? Does he even have any control over them? For them, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory is a licence to operate freely; he is just the catalyst that has enabled them. They don’t report to him.
It is not as if the government is not trying to get the economy moving. Things have been slow, but no one can make systemic changes within six months. Whether Goods and Service Tax or Insurance Bill, the government seems to be committed to see them through, though one might well ask why the BJP was so rabidly against them when it was in the Opposition. Yet, even if the achievement column is somewhat barren, the government gets reasonably good marks for effort in the economy section. That shows it has a sense of where it wants to go.
But all that will come to naught if these Hindutvawadis are not brought under control. They have spread their tentacles into the human resources and development ministry where Smriti Irani is happy to bend to their every whim. The Hindutva agenda will soon find its way into our textbooks.
As we look back at 2014 and contemplate 2015, one can only feel a sense of trepidation at what is in store for the nation. The hope and optimism has not disappeared but is fast fading — all talk of bread and butter issues has been drowned by the absurd rhetoric of hate. Is “ghar wapsi” what young India wants? Will turning India into a Hindutva state get us more jobs? Are these merchants of bigotry and these sundry Swamis and Sadhvis even connected to the 21st century? Who would have thought that at the end of what has been a historic year, these would be the issues in the forefront of our minds? And that this is the future we were signing for? It now looks like the future too will be another country.
